Empress Theatre
111 W. Main Street,
Oklahoma City,
OK
73102
111 W. Main Street,
Oklahoma City,
OK
73102
1 person
favorited this theater
The Empress Theatre opened in the early 1900’s. It was located on West Main Street east of North Robinson Avenue.
I could not find a firm closing date but the 1943 Film Daily Yearbook shows it open, but it had gone from listings by 1950. It has since been demolished.
Contributed by
Chuck
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Recent comments (view all 15 comments)
In that stage door photo; do you suppose those are members of Baby June’s Newsboys?
Even during the early years of the last century merchant sign space caused congestion. To look at a really good Empress Theatre period photo type in word “empress”, then search …
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The Kimball organ was replaced with a Wurlitzer theater organ opus 785 style “D” on 2/16/1924. Status: sold.
The word City in the address above needs to be changed from Cty to City. This theater won’t appear on the list when you do a search for Oklahoma City theaters because of the missing “i”.
Instead of selling the Wurlitzer piecemeal, Paramount donated the organ to a small church located on either NW 11th or NW 12th, East of Pennsylvania Ave, this fine instrument is still there to this very day.
Look on this site for vintage shots of the Empress Theatre;
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Architect George F. Schrieber designed the Empress Theatre.
Probably part of the Sullivan&Considine chain of vaudeville theaters as all their venues were called Empress Theaters nationwide.
In 1956 this parking garage was constructed on the former Empress site,
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From Doug Loedenback’s link comes these 11-26-1911 and 12-4-1911 newspaper notices,
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plus a photo,
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Here are postcard views of the Criterion, Empress, and Olympic, from the book Vanished Splendor II.
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In this 1920 image the Empress Theatre can be seen on the right, and the Criterion Theatre is photo left.
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