Arcadia Theatre

320 S. Broadway,
Baltimore, MD 21231

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Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on September 13, 2021 at 10:20 pm

A house called the Majestic Theatre was listed at 320 S. Broadway in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. There was also an Arcadia Theatre listed at 21 N. Howard Street. A somewhat confusing item appears in the “Picture Theaters Projected” column of Moving Picture World of December 30, 1916:

“BALTIMORE, MD. Blanke & Zink, 648 Equitable building, are preparing plans for remodeling the Arcadia on North avenue for a moving picture theater, to be known as Majestic Motion Picture Parlor. The improvements will cost approximately $85,000.”
The only theater on North Avenue I can find in the Directory is the Aurora, at 7 E. North. It’s possible that MPW just got the sequence of this theater’s names reversed, and got the wrong street, but I’m having a hard time reconciling that $85,000 price tag with this 250-seat house. Perhaps the plans were for an expansion that just never got done.

In any case, as 320 S. Broadway was still listed as the Majestic in 1914, maybe Anderson’s Picture Parlor was a temporary name change. Or the Directory might simply have been behind the times.

I fear that this comment is rather disappointingly useless, but I’ll post it anyway. I just spent half a hour on it.