Relics: The Clemmer - Columbia - Boston Building (1912 - 1968)

A boyhood dream …

Saturday, November 13, 1926

In the small upstairs bedroom of a North Seattle home, the eyes of a ten-year-old boy pop open, wide awake. He is too excited to sleep. Dressed and ready in a flash, he gulps down the breakfast his drowsy mother insists upon, snatches up the handful of coins left for him on the table and flies out the door, into the cold morning darkness. Running to the corner he waits impatiently, leaping onto a southbound #21 streetcar as it passes. The trip across the Fremont Bridge clatters along to Westlake and Fifth in mere minutes, but feels like an eternity. His feet hit the pavement running as he races to Second and Pike, joining a mob of little men in short pants, outside the Columbia Theater, waiting to see their hero.

Post Intelligencer advertisements lauded "Douglas Fairbanks in The Black Pirate" as "The Year’s Great Picture Event!" "The Romance of a Bold Buccaneer," began its Seattle run with a 9:00 a.m. Saturday show, charging a nickel more than the customary 10¢ for children before noon.
They relished the exploits of their idol in The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924). A year had past since Don Q Son of Zorro (1925) came to town. What would this new picture hold in store? Adding to the excitement, advertisements announced it was "Overwhelmingly Photographed in Full Color!"

The ticket window opened, and the army of pint-sized would-be swashbucklers poured past uniformed ushers into the columned vastness of the Columbia’s 1000 seat auditorium, oblivious to the tears shed there by young women only hours before as they wept for their beloved Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse (1921) for the last time.

Hail Columbia …

No recounting of Seattle’s movie theater history would be complete without the mention of John Q. Clemmer. Vaudeville theaters included the earliest photoplay presentations to a paying audience as part of their larger ‘variety’ program. In 1909, the second Seattle theater to bear the Orpheum name, located on the southwest corner of Third and Madison, listed them simply as Orpheum Motion Pictures in the playbill. Theater patrons had not yet overcome their astonishment at viewing any moving image presented for their enjoyment. Converted storefront nickelodeons came and went quickly, but the age of the movie palace had not yet arrived.
Clemmer began his career as a movie house proprietor in 1908 with the Dream Theater, using converted street level space on the west side of First Avenue at Cherry.
Opened in 1912, the Clemmer was the first theater dedicated solely to the presentation of Motion Pictures in Seattle. Considered risky at the time, Clemmer’s investment paid off as the popularity of cinema exploded and Vaudeville slowly faded into the background. By 1922 Clemmer had left Seattle for bigger markets, and his theater was renamed Columbia. He returned from Los Angeles to manage the Columbia in 1924 before taking over operation of the 5th Avenue shortly after it’s opening in 1926.
Located at 1412-16 2nd Avenue, the Columbia underwent extensive remodeling in 1932 for use as commercial retail space (likely a victim of the talkies) and was renamed the Boston Building. The 1936-37 WPA-King County Land Use Survey photograph of the building shows Hales Apparel and Daven’s Linens at tenants. The building originally constructed as the Clemmer Theater was torn down on or by November 11, 1968, replaced by an entirely new multi-level concrete parking garage that opened for business in December 1969.

Theater photos courtesy of the Puget Sound Theater Organ Society.
Special thanks to Greg Lange and Washington Secretary of State: Puget Sound Regional Archives.

Next …

The Black Pirate (1926)