Keith's Theatre

The RKO Keith Theatre closed on September 5, 1962 with “The Spiral Road.” Stars on its stage included Houdini, Jack Benny and Ethel Barrymore. The city took on the property as part of urban renewal.

Houting & Meeusen Wrecking Company of Holland salvaged all of the seats and it also salvaged its Wurlitzer seven-rank two manual pipe organ that had been installed in 1926 which was sold. The theater was demolished in 1963.

May 30, 1915 Grand Rapids Herald print ad added via Rich Howell.

This interesting document is from the diary of Gerrit Winsemius, a Dutch immigrant to Grand Rapids who installed and repaired organs. This is an entry mentioning the Empress Theatre: “1914 Aug 24 Empress theater, Bond Ave + Lyon Street first used.”

It must have been Winsemius who installed the Empress Theatre’s first organ, the Kimball mentioned in an earlier comment by lostmemory. Mr. Winsemius' terseness leaves it unclear whether the “first used” refers to the organ or to the theater itself. In any case, I’ve found references in The Billboard to acts appearing at the Empress in 1914, so that must be the year it opened. The 1915 Variety item cited earlier by JAlex must refer to the reopening of the house under the Keith circuit’s operation.

The April 30, 1930, issue of The Pittsburgh Press has this article about the takeover of the Harris circuit’s theaters by the Warners and RKO. Among the houses being taken over by RKO the article lists the Regent and Empress Theatres in Grand Rapids.

I’m beginning to doubt that this theater was ever called simply Keith’s Theatre during the 1910s or 1920s. I’ve found over 400 references to the Empress Theatre from 1915 to 1922, and only one of them refers to it as Keith’s Empress. It looks like the house only became Keith’s Theatre after RKO took over operation, but how long after I don’t know. The earliest photo I’ve seen with the name Keith’s on the vertical sign dates from 1946 (seenhere at CinemaTour.)

It is possible that Rapp & Rapp did some work on this theater for the Keith-Albee circuit after it took the house over from the original operators, Sullivan & Considine, but the original architect of the Empress Theatre was Lee DeCamp, according to a list in the Grand Rapids Buildings Collection of the Grand Rapids Public Library.

DeCamp was for several years the supervising architect for the Sullivan & Considine circuit, and designed many of the Empress Theatres the chain operated. He also maintained an office in the Empress Theatre Building at least as late as 1918.

The Sullivan & Considine circuit, financially overextended, was falling apart as the Grand Rapids Empress was being built. In 1914, Marcus Loew made a bid to take over the circuit entirely, but this deal fell through and the more than 100 Sullivan & Considine houses in the United States and Canada were subsequently divided among several other circuits, including Pantages, Orpheum, and Keith-Albee.

Lee DeCamp designed at least one other theater in Grand Rapids, this in 1915, but I’ve been unable to track down which one it was, assuming the project was carried out. He was also designing two theaters in Battle Creek and one in Alpena in 1917, according to an item in an issue of The Music Trade Review that year, which gave Grand Rapids as the location of his office.

This house would not have opened in 1914 as RKO Keith’s, as the name RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) wouldn’t come into existence until 1928. A 1915 photo published in “Grand Rapids in Vintage Postcards” shows the name Empress on the theater’s vertical sign, so that was surely its opening name.

It was still listed as the Empress Theatre in the 1922 Grand Rapids City Directory, and a biography of Harry Houdini lists the Empress in Grand Rapids as one of the venues he played in 1926.