The 5th Avenue Theatre
Nineteen-twenties movie palace with an imperial Chinese-style interior, saved from demolition by a private restoration effort.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle opens beneath a carved five-toed dragon, a symbol Chinese law once reserved for the emperor alone, set into the ceiling of a nineteen twenties movie palace. It follows designer Gustav Liljestrom, a Norwegian artist who built an entire imperial fantasy from a nineteen twenty-five German book of temple drawings, through the theater's opening night in nineteen twenty-six and its slow decline into a nineteen seventy-eight closure. Developers then pitched turning the dragon-ceilinged hall into a restaurant, a multiplex, an office block, even a shopping center, with the city unable to landmark it because the land belonged to the University of Washington. Listen for the dragon still facing down the audience below.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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