The building is not demolished. It was converted to a tire dealership and remains open as such. That conversion would have entailed a whole lotta concrete, to level out the sloped floor. The “screen” end of the floor was below the water table, and that end of the building tended to flood. A sump pump was brought in to mitigate the problem, but you can imagine how annoyingly loud that would have been during a show.
I worked in the Mayfair, first as an usher, and later as a projectionist, on and off from 1968 through 1978. I spent many an evening climbing up a ladder to change the marquee shown in the photo above.
It opened as a single-screen theatre with 900 seats in 1966, and was twinned in 1979. I think it closed for good in the early ‘80’s.
I was a projectionist at the Community Theatre from 1970 until 1978. “Earthquake” was one of the films that I played, when it played there in 1974; there were special speakers and amplifiers brought in for that run. The theatre did not close as a result of that engagement, but the “Sennsurround” may have weakened the balcony, which was permanently closed soon afterward.
A number of live shows played that theatre during my time there, and I worked as a stagehand for several of them. Most notably, a bill starring the J. Geils Band played two shows one evening around 1972 or so, with a combined attendance of about 700 (in a house that seated 1600). The opening act was a then-unknown piano player from Long Island…named Billy Joel.
The theatre’s air conditioning system failed sometime in the mid-‘70’s, and Walter Reade Theatres deemed it too expensive to repair. The last film that I projected there was “FM”, in the spring of 1978. I subsequently moved out of the area, and it is my understanding that the theatre was closed by the WRO at some point in 1978.
As of Spring 2024, the #1 auditorium has been upgraded to a Dolby Cinema screen, the first such installation in the greater Portland area.
The building is not demolished. It was converted to a tire dealership and remains open as such. That conversion would have entailed a whole lotta concrete, to level out the sloped floor. The “screen” end of the floor was below the water table, and that end of the building tended to flood. A sump pump was brought in to mitigate the problem, but you can imagine how annoyingly loud that would have been during a show. I worked in the Mayfair, first as an usher, and later as a projectionist, on and off from 1968 through 1978. I spent many an evening climbing up a ladder to change the marquee shown in the photo above. It opened as a single-screen theatre with 900 seats in 1966, and was twinned in 1979. I think it closed for good in the early ‘80’s.
I was a projectionist at the Community Theatre from 1970 until 1978. “Earthquake” was one of the films that I played, when it played there in 1974; there were special speakers and amplifiers brought in for that run. The theatre did not close as a result of that engagement, but the “Sennsurround” may have weakened the balcony, which was permanently closed soon afterward. A number of live shows played that theatre during my time there, and I worked as a stagehand for several of them. Most notably, a bill starring the J. Geils Band played two shows one evening around 1972 or so, with a combined attendance of about 700 (in a house that seated 1600). The opening act was a then-unknown piano player from Long Island…named Billy Joel. The theatre’s air conditioning system failed sometime in the mid-‘70’s, and Walter Reade Theatres deemed it too expensive to repair. The last film that I projected there was “FM”, in the spring of 1978. I subsequently moved out of the area, and it is my understanding that the theatre was closed by the WRO at some point in 1978.