Embassy Theatre
123 Main Street East,
Rochester,
NY
14604
123 Main Street East,
Rochester,
NY
14604
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A theatre had existed on this South Avenue site since the 1860’s. The first theatre built on this spot was destroyed by fire in the 1890’s and replaced with a new theatre by the name of Cook’s Opera House. Under this name it hosted such stars as Buffalo Bill and Sarah Bernhardt.
The interior was a fairly elaborate late-Victorian opera house with two horseshoe shaped balconies. The five story facade was topped with a frieze spelling out the theatre’s name, underneath which was a row of terra cotta busts depicting characters from the opera “Faust”.
In the 1920’s Cook’s Opera House began operating as the Family Theatre, and was the last holdout in Rochester to show silent movies when talkies were sweeping all before them. Later the theatre became the Embassy, which was mainly known for its burlesque shows.
The theatre was closed in the 1950’s and remained a well preserved, but shuttered, building until the 1980’s, when city began eyeing the site for a new convention center. While the convention center was being opposed by local citizens interested in restoring Cook’s Opera House and reopening, it a fire of “mysterious origin” swept through the structure and destroyed it, causing Rochester to lose it’s final 19th century theatre, remaining in near original condition.
Contributed by
Carl Laitenberger
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Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
The Embassy theatre did not survive until the 1980’s as mentioned above. The fire that destroyed the Embassy occured in I believe, 1973. The theatre was to have been renovated and incorporated into a city plan to develop the downtown area of the Genesee river,which ran behind the theatre. The Rochester Riverside Convention Center now sits on the site.
The Embassy can be seen on the right in this 1947 photo from the Rochester Public Library:
http://tinyurl.com/6arc3k
As the “Cook Opera House”, this theater is listed under Rochester in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. George Geiling was the Mgr and the seating capacity was 1,500. The theater had both gas and electric illumination. The proscenium opening was 33 feet wide X 26 feet high, and the stage was 51 feet deep. The theater was on the ground floor and there were 7 in the house orchestra. It’s also described as “Cook’s Opera House”. The other Rochester theater listed in this Guide is the Lyceum, wiith 1,698 seats. The 1897 population of Rochester was 160,000.
The architectural firm of Leon H. Lempert & Son designed the Cook Opera House. The firm was located in Rochester, and designed numerous theaters there. The other Rochester theaters they had designed, as listed in an ad for the firm in the 1905 editionof Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide, were the National, the Baker, the Lyceum, the Empire, and the Corinthian.
Donovan A. Shilling’s book “Rochester: Labor and Leisure” (Google Books preview) says that the Cook Opera House became the Family Theatre in 1913.
I guess it’s a little ridiculous to respond to a comment from 5 years ago, but charlesc is mistaken. The were not any actual plans in place to restore the theatre, just a group of citizens who were hoping to do so in spite of the city wanting to destroy the theatre. I remember in the same block was the Commerce Building, which was a lovely Beaux Arts skyscraper, and the old Security Trust Bank. Local citizens kicked up a fuss to save all the buildings, but with the fire at Cook’s Opera house the efforts to save them came to nothing. I was working at Lawyer’s Co-op at the time, and had been out of school for a few years, so the earliest the fire could have occured would have been 1979.
It seems suspicious that a theatre could sit vacant and untouched for decades, and then when the gov’t wants the site, it suddenly burns down.
Instead of something unique and local, Rochester now has the same ininspired type convention center so common to many cities. It just seems odd that with all the vacant land downtown, it couldn’t have gone somewhere else.
What with the loss of Sibley’s, the theatres on Clinton Avenue, Midtown Plaza, and dozens of other things, I don’t even go downtown when I go home to visit. Just the thought is too sickening.