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Overview

This Mission Style theatre, known as the Society, opened in 1909, and showed a mixture of movies and vaudeville acts originally. It was renamed the Broadway in 1921.

Building History

The Broadway Theatre closed as a movie venue on 01/11/1990. A Pay'n Save that operated next door wanted the space for expansion, gutted the theatre and moved in thereafter. Pay'n Save became a subsidiary of the CA-based Pacific Enterprises and its Thrifty Corporation, its drug store subsidiary, in 1988. (See George White, Los Angeles Times.com, "Thrifty to Buy All 147 Pay ‘n Save Stores for $232 Million in Stock," published 05/14/1988, accessed 11/16/2020.)

It later was converted to a Rite-Aid Drug Store which kept a theatre marquis outside in homage to the Society / Broadway Theatre. Rite-Aid purchased a number of former Pay'n Save locations in the Seattle area. Rite-Aid, in turn, was boughtby Deerfield, IL-based Walgreens Boots Alliance, Incorporated, in 2017-2018.

Building Notes

By 1916, the Society Theatre had set aside a soundproof room in which mothers with infants could sit and watch movies without disturbing other patrons. A note in the magazine Motography said in 1916: “The manager of the Society Theater, Seattle, Washington, has conceived a most ingenious scheme by which crying babies will not disturb the audience, and yet the mothers can watch the pictures. He has established a rest room in his theater so located that one can sit there and watch the pictures and at the same time the noise of the baby cannot be heard. There is no doubt that the mothers will all patronize this theater.” (See “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, vol. XV, no. 23, 06/03/1916, pp. 1261-1262.)

The Broadway Theatre deaccessioned its original 1909 Kimball organ in 1934. It was dismantled and reassembled at Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Stanwood, WA. (See PSTOS.org, Puget Sound Pipeline: Broadway (Society) Theatre,” accessed 11/16/2020.)

Alteration

The Broadway Theatre was remodeled in 1948.

PCAD id: 23732