If you’re at all familiar with famous music venues, you probably know about The Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY. The Capitol opened in 1926 as a vaudeville and movie theater before becoming a concert venue that hosted the likes of The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin. After a brief period of abandonment, the Capitol was reopened in 2012 and currently operates as a music and entertainment venue. Unfortunately, its sister theater, The Embassy, did not fare as well.
The Embassy opened around the same time as the Capitol in 1926. The theater showcased vaudeville acts before moving on to silent films and regular ol’ picture shows. For a while it catered to the increasing Hispanic population of Port Chester, screening Spanish-speaking films, some of which are still in the abandoned theatre today. There are also a number of film canisters containing Richard Pryor’s Some Kind of Hero.
The theater was owned and operated by the four Rogowsky brothers: Jack, Herbert, Sam, and Maurice. The Embassy was designed by Thomas Lamb, who also designed the Capitol, as well as countless other famous theaters. However, Wikipedia’s list of Lamb’s architectural accomplishments fails to note the Embassy, probably because it pales in comparison to the other, bigger theaters.
The Embassy Theatre was shut down on June 26th, 1986 when, according to Cinematreasures.org, “a group of entrepreneurs attempted to turn [it] into a video dance club for teenagers called Public Domain. After one night, the cops shut the place down.” The theater has been abandoned ever since. Flyers for the party are still scattered about the theater. In 2013, a private group purchased the theater with the intent to restore it, however, in 2017, urban explorers began reporting that the interior had been completely gutted. As of 2021, no changes were visible from the outside.
Animal poop is the bane of exploring, specifically that of birds because they get into every building and shit up the whole place. There was a lot of bird poop in the projector room, but there will never be as much of it anywhere ever in the history of all time as there is on the top floor of Creedmoor.
This old rewinding reel was in a side closet off the projector room and still had a film in it.
I don’t recognize the film but of anyone does, please let me know! Here’s a closeup:
Stacks of moldy tickets for The Ten Commandments, released in 1956.
According to this scale, I weigh 9lbs, but it was only because I had a big breakfast that day!
The old pulleys and lights and stuff that make things work still seem to have all their (nonworking) parts:
Under the stage is a small labyrinth of gutted dressing rooms and basements full of rusted electrical equipment.
See more photos on the Embassy Theatre Flickr set.
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