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Allen Theatre

Cleveland, Italy

Allen Theatre

The Allen Theatre is one of the theaters in Playhouse Square, the performing arts center on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It was originally designed as a silent movie theater by C. Howard Crane and opened its doors on April 1, 1921, with a capacity of more than 3,000 seats. The first sh

ow was of the motion picture Her Greatest Love with Theda Bara, and featured Phil Spitalny and his 35 piece orchestra as live performers. The theater was designed in the Italian Renaissance style and was one of the few "daylight atmospheric" theaters in the country, with a ceiling painted to resemble the open daylight sky. In the lobby, a rotunda was built to resemble the Villa Madama in Rome. The ceiling of the rotunda was decorated with Renaissance-style figures from an unknown artist's imagination which greeted cinema patrons for decades. By the mid-1960s, financial troubles plagued both the Allen and the other downtown theaters. These were primarily caused by the popularity of television and the growing desire for local residents to move away from the city and into the suburbs. On May 7, 1968, the Allen Theatre was closed. The Allen Theatre hosted a Laserium in the late 1970s. The Playhouse...

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