The 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle, Washington. The Magic Sign of a Wonderful Time

Seattle: The 5th Avenue Theater, 1926. 31x23cm, 84pp. Printed in color throughout with photographs, advertisements, Illustrations including 5 tipped-in, and a tipped-in program. Illustrated paper wrappers with mesh fabric covered cutout on front cover and original string tie present. Minor tape repair to bottom edge of front cover, some edge wear and soiling to wrappers, clean and bright internally and very good.

Spectacular souvenir program from the grand opening of the historic 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle, September 24, 1926.  The show was a Fanchon & Marco vaudeville production which also included numbers from Oliver Wallace, Lipschultz, and a showing of Cecil B. DeMille's Young April, which debuted that year.  

The theater took 11 months to build, and the architect, Robert C. Reamer modeled the building after The Forbidden City, the Temple of Heavenly Peace, and the Summer Palace of Imperial China.  The program, of course, features the Chinese art, culture, and architecture which influenced Reamer, a white European in his design, and is interesting when looked at in the context of the significant anti-Chinese sentiment in the Pacific Northwest and United States at the time.  


OCLC locates 4 holdings of this program which represents a piece of Seattle theater history and also stands alone as an object of beauty.  Simply one of the best and most lavishly produced West Coast theater publications of the time.  .