By 1915, Seattle's downtown commercial core was booming. In March 1915, local lumber baron and businessman C. D. Stimson leased lots on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Pike Street to the newly-formed Coliseum Company to build a theater designed specifically for movies, then called photoplays. The Coliseum Photo Playhouse was designed by noted theater architect B. Marcus Priteca, and the elegant venue opened on January 8, 1916. In addition to the shows, features included a large smoking room for men, large restrooms for women, a children's playroom, caged songbirds, and lavish floral arrangements. An eight-piece Russian orchestra and a organ were on hand to accompany silent films.
Managed at first by The Greater Theatres Company, the theater remained Seattle's premier movie house into the 1980s, when it lost out to suburban multiplexes. The Coliseum closed in 1990 but was reborn as a Banana Republic store in 1994 with some of its original elegance still intact. This photo shows the organ at the Coliseum.
Handwritten on sleeve: Coliseum Theatre Organ Webster & Stevens number: 82827
Caption information source: Seattle Daily Times, March 7, 1915, p. 1; May 9, 1915, p. 5; and January 2, 1916, p. 24 Caption information source: HistoryLink.org Essay 2538
