Playhouse
16 Elm Street,
Portland,
ME
04101
16 Elm Street,
Portland,
ME
04101
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I think the Elm Theater most likely ended its movie career in 1929. Starting in 1931 it was the home of live theater presented by the newly-founded Portland Players theater group, an organization that still exists. During this period the theater was known as the Playhouse. The Players later moved into the Portland Theatre for some time. I’ve been unable to find any evidence that the Elm Theatre ever returned to being a movie house before being demolished in 1952.
Grand opening ad posted. Closed (or stopped its newspaper ads) in 1929.
In Donald King’s article about Portland theaters in THSA Marquee Magazine, 1st quarter 1991, he states that when the Elm opened in Sept 1916, the auditorium was decorated in a blue & gold motif, and that the balcony stairs were lighted glass. The CinemaData file for the Elm states that it was later known as “Playhouse/ Portland Playhouse” but King does not mention any later names for it. (But I suspect that King’s article in Marquee was condensed.) When the MGM Theatre Report project came to Portland in Spring 1941, they did not include the Elm, for some reason.
This photo from Maine Memory provides a rather oblique view of the Elm Theatre dated 1920.
The “Face of Mirth” that adorned the keystone of the theater’s arched entrance was unearthed when excavation for the new library was being done in 1977, 25 years after the theater had been demolished. Here is a photo of it.
A plaque installed at the site where the artifact is now displayed says that the Elm Theatre was designed by local architects William R. Miller and Raymond J. Mayo.