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Proctor's Theater (Troy, New York)
Encyclopedia
Proctor's Theater is located on Fourth Street (northbound US 4
) in Troy
, New York, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 1979, and is a contributing property
to the Central Troy Historic District
, added to the Register in 1986.
It was built in 1914 for vaudeville
performances by Capital District
entrepreneur Frederick F. Proctor, who also built another theater with his name in nearby Schenectady
. Its double-balcony
auditorium made it easily adaptable for showing motion pictures when that entertainment came into fashion soon after it opened.
In the late 1970s it closed. Since then it has been through several owners, including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI), which have had various plans, including renovating it into office space or reusing it as a theater. None have yet come to fruition, and it currently remains unused in any capacity.
front facade
of brick
and marble
covered in glazed terra-cotta
. On the ground level, rusticated
column
s rise up to lion's heads. Five engaged marble columns frame the upper floors, rising to gargoyle
-like figures, and two towers rise above the roofline at either end of the facade. The one above the main entry features a variety of terra cotta details: colonettes, dentils, escutcheons, and paretae.
The interior has suffered from years of neglect, but its basic plan remains. The tile
d lobby
with arch
ed ceilings and paneled walls, leads via staircases to the two balconies, and into a foyer
to the orchestra floor. Gold leaf
adorned (or originally did) the arches in that section. The proscenium
features a David Lithgow painting of Lafayette's visit to Troy in 1824. All these fixtures remain unchanged from the theater's original construction.
and New York City
hired Arlard Johnson to design the theater, hoping to make it his grandest project since he had entered the business nearly three decades before. It cost $325,000 to construct, and when it opened in 1914 it became the largest theater in the state and was praised as "a structure ranking foremost in American theatrical circles."
From their inception, he had realized the potential of motion pictures and had begun adapting his theaters to the new medium. The Troy Proctor's classically inspired double-balcony form lent itself well to the movies because it put the audience close to the stage no matter where they were in the theater. It had not been designed to accommodate a projector
and screen
, but by the 1920s a booth had been added. During that era its productions, like many other theaters of the time, included both live and filmed entertainment. In the 1930s, with the advent of the sound era
making the live act superfluous, the central chandelier
was removed along with some other renovations, including removing the paintings from the lobby and painting over the gold leaf in the orchestra.
After Proctor's death in 1929, the theater continued to operate as a popular downtown destination. After the mid-20th century, it began to lose business due to television
and suburbanization
. In 1977, it finally closed, its last show seen by a crowd of around 40 people. A year later the city acquired the property when it foreclosed
on the then-owners. It is the only remaining movie palace in Troy, albeit unused for that purpose ever since then.
of the Schenectady Proctor's had been for that city. The building was structurally sound, and could easily be restored to its original purpose.
Proponents of the plan responded that the theater had not been successfully redeveloped in the years since it had closed and it was time to try something else to revitalize a block of downtown Troy that remained dilapidated. They noted that the Schenectady Proctor's still lost money and that the project would create jobs the city needed in a slow economy.
In October 2011 it was announced that, in a $14.4 million public-private project including a $3.3 million Restore New York grant, Columbia Development Companies would acquire Proctor’s Theater and launch a restoration.
U.S. Route 4 in New York
U.S. Route 4 is a part of the U.S. Highway System that runs from East Greenbush, New York, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the U.S. state of New York, US 4 extends from an intersection with US 9 and US 20 in East Greenbush to the Vermont state line northeast of Whitehall...
) in Troy
Troy, New York
Troy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...
, New York, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1979, and is a contributing property
Contributing property
In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing resource or contributing property is any building, structure, or object which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic district, listed locally or federally, significant...
to the Central Troy Historic District
Central Troy Historic District
The Central Troy Historic District is an irregularly-shaped, area of downtown Troy, New York, United States. It has been described as "one of the most perfectly preserved 19th-century downtowns in the [country]" with nearly 700 properties in a variety of architectural styles from the early 19th to...
, added to the Register in 1986.
It was built in 1914 for vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
performances by Capital District
Capital District
New York's Capital District, also known as the Capital Region, is a region in upstate New York that generally refers to the four counties surrounding Albany, the capital of the state: Albany County, Schenectady County, Rensselaer County, and Saratoga County...
entrepreneur Frederick F. Proctor, who also built another theater with his name in nearby Schenectady
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...
. Its double-balcony
Balcony
Balcony , a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade.-Types:The traditional Maltese balcony is a wooden closed balcony projecting from a...
auditorium made it easily adaptable for showing motion pictures when that entertainment came into fashion soon after it opened.
In the late 1970s it closed. Since then it has been through several owners, including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...
(RPI), which have had various plans, including renovating it into office space or reusing it as a theater. None have yet come to fruition, and it currently remains unused in any capacity.
Building
The theater is part of a row of buildings along the east side of Fourth Street. It is five stories high, with a highly decorativeOrnament (architecture)
In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornament does not include human figures, and if present they...
front facade
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
of brick
Brick
A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...
and marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
covered in glazed terra-cotta
Glazed architectural terra-cotta
Glazed architectural terra-cotta is a ceramic masonry building material popular in the United States from the late 19th century until the 1930s, and still one of the most common building materials found in U.S. urban environments...
. On the ground level, rusticated
Rustication (architecture)
thumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...
column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
s rise up to lion's heads. Five engaged marble columns frame the upper floors, rising to gargoyle
Gargoyle
In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between...
-like figures, and two towers rise above the roofline at either end of the facade. The one above the main entry features a variety of terra cotta details: colonettes, dentils, escutcheons, and paretae.
The interior has suffered from years of neglect, but its basic plan remains. The tile
Tile
A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, or even glass. Tiles are generally used for covering roofs, floors, walls, showers, or other objects such as tabletops...
d lobby
Lobby (room)
A lobby is a room in a building which is used for entry from the outside. Sometimes referred to as a foyer or an entrance hall.Many office buildings, hotels and skyscrapers go to great lengths to decorate their lobbies to create the right impression....
with arch
Arch
An arch is a structure that spans a space and supports a load. Arches appeared as early as the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamian brick architecture and their systematic use started with the Ancient Romans who were the first to apply the technique to a wide range of structures.-Technical aspects:The...
ed ceilings and paneled walls, leads via staircases to the two balconies, and into a foyer
Foyer
A foyer or lobby is a large, vast room or complex of rooms adjacent to the auditorium...
to the orchestra floor. Gold leaf
Gold leaf
right|thumb|250px|[[Burnishing]] gold leaf with an [[agate]] stone tool, during the water gilding processGold leaf is gold that has been hammered into extremely thin sheets and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades...
adorned (or originally did) the arches in that section. The proscenium
Proscenium
A proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch , which is located at or near the front of the stage...
features a David Lithgow painting of Lafayette's visit to Troy in 1824. All these fixtures remain unchanged from the theater's original construction.
History
Proctor, who had already built and operated several successful vaudeville theaters in AlbanyAlbany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
hired Arlard Johnson to design the theater, hoping to make it his grandest project since he had entered the business nearly three decades before. It cost $325,000 to construct, and when it opened in 1914 it became the largest theater in the state and was praised as "a structure ranking foremost in American theatrical circles."
From their inception, he had realized the potential of motion pictures and had begun adapting his theaters to the new medium. The Troy Proctor's classically inspired double-balcony form lent itself well to the movies because it put the audience close to the stage no matter where they were in the theater. It had not been designed to accommodate a projector
Movie projector
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying moving pictures by projecting them on a projection screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.-Physiology:...
and screen
Projection screen
A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be permanently installed, as in a movie theater; painted on the wall; or semi-permanent or mobile, as in a conference room...
, but by the 1920s a booth had been added. During that era its productions, like many other theaters of the time, included both live and filmed entertainment. In the 1930s, with the advent of the sound era
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
making the live act superfluous, the central chandelier
Chandelier
A chandelier is a branched decorative ceiling-mounted light fixture with two or more arms bearing lights. Chandeliers are often ornate, containing dozens of lamps and complex arrays of glass or crystal prisms to illuminate a room with refracted light...
was removed along with some other renovations, including removing the paintings from the lobby and painting over the gold leaf in the orchestra.
After Proctor's death in 1929, the theater continued to operate as a popular downtown destination. After the mid-20th century, it began to lose business due to television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and suburbanization
Suburbanization
Suburbanization a term used to describe the growth of areas on the fringes of major cities. It is one of the many causes of the increase in urban sprawl. Many residents of metropolitan regions work within the central urban area, choosing instead to live in satellite communities called suburbs...
. In 1977, it finally closed, its last show seen by a crowd of around 40 people. A year later the city acquired the property when it foreclosed
Foreclosure
Foreclosure is the legal process by which a mortgage lender , or other lien holder, obtains a termination of a mortgage borrower 's equitable right of redemption, either by court order or by operation of law...
on the then-owners. It is the only remaining movie palace in Troy, albeit unused for that purpose ever since then.
Redevelopment proposal
In the early 2000s, RPI acquired the building and hoped to partially use it as office space and keep the theater. They eventually brought in a developer who proposed to use a state grant to gut the building's interior and replace the auditorium with office space, while keeping the facade. Residents organized a group and online petition in opposition to this, pointing to how successful the restorationBuilding restoration
Building restoration describes a particular treatment approach and philosophy within the field of architectural conservation. According the U.S...
of the Schenectady Proctor's had been for that city. The building was structurally sound, and could easily be restored to its original purpose.
Proponents of the plan responded that the theater had not been successfully redeveloped in the years since it had closed and it was time to try something else to revitalize a block of downtown Troy that remained dilapidated. They noted that the Schenectady Proctor's still lost money and that the project would create jobs the city needed in a slow economy.
Restore NY grant
As of March, 2011, the theatre is expected to receive $3.3 million from a "Restore NY" grant. The money would be used by Columbia Development to rehabilitate the theatre building and two adjacent office buildings, including the Chasan Building, which is also owned by RPI.In October 2011 it was announced that, in a $14.4 million public-private project including a $3.3 million Restore New York grant, Columbia Development Companies would acquire Proctor’s Theater and launch a restoration.
External links
- Save Proctor's Theater!, site for opponents of redevelopment