Majestic Theater

The Majestic Theater's importance is primarily architectural. The theater meets national register criterion C within the context of the Detroit area's Art Deco and enameled metal panel architecture for its enormous and brilliantly colorful enameled metal panel Art Deco front. An architectural and visual landmark along Woodard Avenue, Detroit's 'main street,' it is the largest, and probably the most colorful, enameled metal panel Deco facade in Detroit and the entire metropolitan region. The Majestic was built in 1914-15 and opened April 1, 1915. The architect of the building as originally designed was Detroit-based theater specialist C. Howard Crane. The theater was medium-sized among Detroit's early twentieth-century movie theaters, originally seating 1651 patrons. The Majestic featured vaudeville as well as movies and also legitimate theater performed by 'The Woodward Players' troupe. The striking Art Deco facade of the Majestic Theater was constructed in 1934-35 when, because of the Woodward Avenue widening project, the front thirty-five feet of the theater, with its arcaded Italian facade, had to be removed. The demands of traffic led to plans to widen Woodward Avenue beginning in the 1920s. The massive project, finally carried out during the mid-1930s, resulted in a dramatic widening of the avenue from Adams Avenue in downtown Detroit out to Grand Boulevard, two and a half miles in all, all of it through a heavily built up urban environment. In some cases buildings were moved back, and in others the buildings were simply demolished. Most often, the buildings were left in place, but their front portions were removed and new facades installed on these older buildings. The Majestic's present facade, sheathed in 'Macotta' panels, porcelain enameled steel-faced concrete panels edged with stainless steel made by the Maul Macotta Company in Detroit, was designed by Detroit/Dearborn architects Bennett & Straight. Bennett & Straight - Lavern R. Bennett (1890-1954) and Eugene D. Straight (1898-1969) - were also movie theater specialists who designed sixty-seven theaters throughout the Midwest, many of them in the Detroit area, primarily in the 1930s and 40s. They include the Life and Crystal Theaters in Detroit, the Harbor in Ecorse, the Shafer in Garden City, the Allen Park in Allen Park and the Main Theater in Royal Oak. Few of their thus far identified Detroit area theaters have survived.

Built in 1914-15, the four-story tall Majestic Theater is a rectangular steel-frame building with brick side and rear walls and a four-slope truss roof with a low peak and, on either side, a broad but shallow upper slope and steep but short lower slope. The theater displays Detroit's largest and probably most colorful enameled metal panel Art Deco front. This present front was built in 1934-35 when the widening of Woodward Avenue required the demolition of the front thirty-five feet of the building, including its arcaded Italian facade. The present upper facade is finished in 'Macotta,' stainless steel-edged porcelain enameled steel-faced concrete panels manufactured by a company in Detroit. It displays what a contemporary newspaper account called a 'riot of colors'- most prominently orange-red, with cream-color and light and dark blue accents as well. The Macotta upper facade is divided into three sections by large vertical orange-red 'piers,' each outlined by a cream-color band. They rise to a broad 'frieze' of light blue panels trimmed with vertical accents in the other colors. Vertical columns of color - a narrow dark blue band at either side, broader cream-color band toward the center inside them on each side, and central stylized vine pattern combining elements in the front's whole color range- rise between the broad piers- three columns in the side sections and four in the center. The columns in the center section terminate at frieze level in vertical caps that, displaying the vine pattern and multi-hued color scheme, have instepping flanks and rise to a narrow flat peak. A cream-color parapet, with raised central section displaying light blue accent strips, forms the top of this brilliant-hued front. A marquee that, containing the theater's name in its front, projected over the sidewalk in front of the center section above the entrances has been removed, and, in the upper facade, a few Macotta panels are missing. The Majestic stands along the east side of Woodward Avenue between Willis and Alexandrine in Detroit's Midtown section about one mile north of the downtown. One much altered small early twentieth-century commercial building separates it from Willis to the north. On the south the Majestic adjoins the Garden Bowl bowling alley building, and there is one additional building in the block at the Alexandrine corner. These buildings face mostly early twentieth-century commercial buildings across Woodward Avenue that form part of the east edge of the national register-listed Willis-Selden Historic District. The Majestic Theater presents three first-floor storefronts, but these now display modern finishes. The two south storefronts now front a single restaurant space, while the northern provides entry to the former theater space. The theater proper, now used as a concert space, has been much altered since its last use as a movie theater in the 1950s, but retains some of its original fixtures and Adamesque decorative finish. The original seating was 'bleacher' style, with a single broad slope of seating rising toward the rear without any balcony. A large block of this original seating remains in place, but the rear section near the building's front was removed for the Woodward widening project in the 1930s and the front end nearest the stage was cut off in the 1950s when the building was converted to a new use and the rake to the theater floor was eliminated. The former theater interior retains some of its original 1915 Adamesque finish, including a square-head proscenium with much of its rosette, scroll, and cartouche plasterwork decoration and the flat ceiling dominated by a very large central oval Adamesque feature.