History
The theater's history begins in 1925, when a Kingston couple and an Albany man incorporated with $5,300 ($69,000 in contemporary dollars). The next year they acquired the land and began selling bonds to raise more money. They hired prominent New York City architect Douglas P. Hall. That October, construction began with Sinner and Cook, also of New York, as general contractor.
Construction continued through the winter. The largest derrick in the state at that time was used to put the steel framing in place for the auditorium and proscenium arch. Upon its grand opening in June 1927 as the Broadway Theatre the Daily Freeman called it "one of the finest theatres in the Hudson River Valley". The program shown to the capacity crowd of 1,703 included five vaudeville acts and Howard Hawks' comedy The Cradle Snatchers. The ushers wore Spanish costumes to complement the decor. A schedule of three daily performances began the next day.
By 1947 it had changed owners three times. The Walter Reade organization bought it that year and renamed it the Community Theatre. Six years later, in 1953, the front portico was added. Inside, the original floor seats were replaced and a party box added, reducing the capacity to 1,560.
The theater continued to be a major part of the city's cultural life. Bette Davis and Lillian Gish were among the actors who performed on stage. Musical greats included Isaac Stern and Victor Borges, who praised the theater's acoustics.
Kingston's downtown began to decline with growing suburbanization in the 1970s. In 1977 the Reade organization closed the theater, citing competition for moviegoers from suburban shopping malls with multiple screens. To avert the building's possible demolition, a nonprofit organization, the Ulster Performing Arts Center, was formed and bought the theater.
In 1995, the nonprofit raised the money for a $1.7 million renovation, completed in time for the building's 75th anniversary in 2002. The Bardavon began managing UPAC in 2006 and the two organizations merged the following year.
Read more about this topic: Ulster Performing Arts Center
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