Empress Theatre
535 W. Second Avenue,
Fairbanks,
AK
99701
535 W. Second Avenue,
Fairbanks,
AK
99701
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While there apparently was an earlier Empress Theatre in Fairbanks, local sources I’ve seen have all been in agreement that this house opened on August 25, 1927, and I’ve found none that give it any name other than Empress. CinemaTour cites a June 15, 1962 item in the Daily News Miner saying that the house had shown its last movie the previous night. It was the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy “Lover Come Back.”
It’s 1950s marquee was still standing by 1967
Opened on September 8th, 1921 as Fairbank Theatre and renamed Empress on January 31st, 1922. Closed 1953. 1st newspaper ads posted.
Here is an updated link to the 1953 Boxoffice article about the Empress Theatre.
Paul G. Carlson was not the original architect of the 1927 Empress. He was born in 1912, and received his degree in architecture from the University of Washington in 1935. Partners Barney Grevstad and Frederick R. Eley were about the same age.
Carlson was an associate in the office of theater architect Bjarne Moe from 1935 to 1941, and participated in the design of the Liberty Theatre at Ellensburg, Washington and the second Green Lake Theatre in Seattle, both built in 1937.
Frederick R. Eley was the son of Fred H. Eley, a prominent architect in Santa Ana, California, in the early 20th century.
This article on the Empress, with photos, appeared in Boxoffice magazine on January 3, 1953:
View link
Here is a photo from the late 1940s:
http://tinyurl.com/mjzee
Status should be closed, I think. Here is an interior photo from 1927:
http://tinyurl.com/qt4sx