Senator Theatre
5904 York Road,
Baltimore,
MD
21212
5904 York Road,
Baltimore,
MD
21212
49 people
favorited this theater
The Senator Theater opened October 5, 1939, with 1,024 seats all on a single level. Its opening attraction was “Stanley and Livingston” starring Spencer Tracy. It was designed in the Art Deco style by theatre architect John J. Zink, whose other theatre designs include the Uptown Theatre in Washington DC. Interior decorations were carried out by the Paramount Decorating Co. On one side of the projection booth was a sound-proof party room and on the other side there was a sound-proof nursery.
During its operation, the theater has been used to raise millions of dollars for local and national charitable organizations. It has also hosted world premieres and has been featured in numerous films and commercials, including “Avalon”, “12 Monkeys”, “Cecil B. Demented”, and others.
As the Senator Theatre was running in the red, ownership fell in the hands of the City of Baltimore. The City closed the theatre in July 2010, the only time it had been closed since it opened. The City selected the operator of the Charles Theatre to take over, and it reopened on October 15, 2010 with the Bruce Willis thriller “Red”. With “The Hunger Games”, the Senator Theatre closed on April 26, 2012 for renovations that will add to the original auditorium, three additional auditoriums that will adjoin the foyer. Reopening is scheduled for May, 2013.
The theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Contributed by
David Frier, Colin P. Varga, Gayle Grove
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Recent comments (view all 202 comments)
Renovations update: baltimoresun
Upon closer inspection of the remodel schematics, the mens room appears have the same number of urinals/stalls..maybe there’s an additional one or two. With the additional screens and traffic, they have to have bigger restrooms. When the place sells out, prior to the remodel, there would be lines out the door. One or two more urinals isn’t going to help much at all.
On the other hand, there isn’t anything to show what they are doing to the upper level. Before, they had it available for private party rentals. I imagine they are keeping at least the old crying rooms for rentals. It would have been nice to have made little balconies for all the auditoriums.
This theater was in a John Waters movie – Pink Flamingos – I’ll bet you didn’t know that!!
Are they leaving the original auditorium intact as a single screen or are they ruining it by cutting it up?
^ oh god I hope not Mike.
Although I didn’t add my name to the cluster of contributors to the Intro above, I wrote the language that says 3 auditoriums are being ADDED in addition to the original auditorium. No constriction whatsoever is being made on the original auditorium. Facebook has at least 2 sites, one from the prior owner, one from new owner. Both have photos.
so which facebook is which? there’s one listed as Senator theater and one as ‘True Friends of the Senator’
There’s thesenatortheatre and true friends of the senator on Facebook. The truefriends facebook page seems more aligned with the previous owner and the group organized to save the theater prior to its ownership transfer. There has been no comments since Nov 2012.
The other facebook page appears to be the one run by the current owners, as there are about 11 pics posted on the renovation.
I wished they could have enlarged the screen from 40, to say 60'. Nostalgia sentiments aside, it doesn’t compete with the IMAX-lite auditoriums, although the sound system they had was killer nevertheless. Digital projection should be excellent here.
the only way they could compete with the other spangly new theaters would be to have state of the art 4K DLP digital projection and 7.1 surround sound. Will the main theater feature 35mm/70mm/Digital projection?
JodarMovieFan, the Facebook group with prior owner has recently commented, that’s where I read of planned May reopening which they mentioned (and so I amended the Intro above).