Abandoned Theater in Baltimore

Mayfair Theater - Auditorium Theatre, Baltimore Maryland

Date added: October 26, 2023 Categories:

The Mayfair Theater (earlier the Natatorium, the Howard Auditorium, and the Auditorium) has served as an entertainment facility on its present site since 1870.

The Mayfair Theatre is one of the two remaining buildings of the original three in the Kernan hotel-theater complex which included the Hotel Kernan (Congress Hotel), the Maryland Theatre (demolished 1951), and the Auditorium Theatre, which was renamed the Mayfair in 1941. The complex was the largest entertainment grouping in early 20th-century Baltimore. The architecture of the group was a florid Beaux-Arts-influenced French Renaissance style which is still mostly unchanged in the upper facade of the Mayfair. The theater is also one of the three remaining downtown "movie palaces"; the others are the Hippodrome and the Town Theater.

The Auditorium Theatre is built on the foundations of the 1882 Natatorium, a proposed swimming school with a pool in the basement. The school didn't succeed, but the building continued operating as a Turkish bath and light entertainment hall under the name of the Howard Auditorium. The 1882 structure was an exotically decorated cottage-like building with icicle-shaped trip hanging from the gables, cornices, and window frames. Burlesque acts and short dramatic pieces were performed, as well as occasional serious musical concerts. In 1891, James L. Kernan bought the building and remodeled it into a more classical brick-fronted music hall, but kept the name Howard Auditorium.

In 1903, Kernan demolished the old Auditorium to erect the present theater, but kept the Turkish bath, which apparently did well consistently, unlike the entertainment side of the old Auditorium. With the refurbished pool and a connecting passage to the Maryland Theatre on Franklin Street, the Auditorium Theatre reopened in late 1903 as a vaudeville house. Later the vaudeville acts shifted to the Maryland Theatre and the Auditorium featured mostly musicals and legitimate theater. By 1915, projection equipment had been installed and films were shown on a regular basis.

The Auditorium was sold separately from the other Kernan properties in 1940 and an extensive interior remodeling took place. The architect was E. Bernard Evander, who designed a dropped ceiling that concealed the romantically painted dome and steeply raked balconies. The reopening on January 31^st, 1941 marked its transition to a movie theater, the last stage act having appeared in 1939. The Turkish bath had probably closed before this remodeling, but it remained closed off under the theater.

The age of the movie palace in the 1940s and 1950s was embodied by several groupings of theaters along East Baltimore, West Fayette and North Eutaw Streets, and North Howard Street, where the Mayfair, the Stanley, and the Maryland, until its demolition in 1951, were the main attractions. The elaborate facades of these theaters mirrored the importance of movie-going in the post World War II period. The Mayfair received a further remodeling in 1963 just before the Baltimore opening of "Lawrence of Arabia". This alteration resulted in the present marquee and street level facade which obscured but did not destroy the original design. The interior has had several reworkings and the theater is currently closed.

Building Description

The Mayfair Theatre is a 1903 brick theater building with an elaborate stone and terra cotta facade in Classical Revival style located on the west side of North Howard Street about halfway between West Franklin and Centre Streets in central Baltimore, Maryland. The principal elevation facing east to Howard Street has a street level concealed behind black paneling and twin box offices in half-round columns on each side of the facade. The central doorway is a glass and metal trefoil design. This treatment and the triangular marquee date from about 1963. Above the marquee, the original facade is virtually intact with window openings closed off but unchanged. It is dominated by a central bay of three arches flanked by piers of rusticated stone and a variety of window shapes and trim. The cornice has a complicated roofline with pediments, scrolls, finials, carvings of floral panels, cartouches, and lyres. A mansard covered with copper tiles and featuring three ocular windows is just visible from street level. The interior has been much altered, primarily by the false ceiling in the auditorium which conceals a huge original vault and balconies.

The original Auditorium Theatre (now the Mayfair Theatre) was one of the three parts of the Kernan hotel-and-entertainment complex on North Howard and West Franklin Streets, all of which were linked by interior passages. The Congress Hotel (formerly Hotel Kernan); and the present Mayfair are still linked by subterranean hallways and stairs through the Turkish bath under the theater, although the entire underground area is deteriorated and unused. The theater itself is much altered at the street level exterior and in the interior. The original facade had a large arched entrance flanked by a smaller archway on the south end which was the Turkish bath entrance. The present entrance facade, dating from about 1965, is paneled in black with twin half-round columns at the extreme outer edges which were the box offices. These are not currently in use. Two poster cases flank the entrance, a bank of glass doors surrounded by a trefoil of glass with gold metal muntins. The marquee is triangular and lighted from within. The flat apex of the marquee has the theater's name in a panel with an arc-shaped lower edge.

Above the marquee is the stone and terra cotta original elevation. Although obscured by the marquee, the central arch is probably mostly unaltered. The intermediary cornice is the general lower limit of the visible exterior. From this feature upwards, the rusticated stone walls are divided into three bays. The central bay has a group of three arched bays extending through two levels of window openings. The lower openings are simple rectangles and have been closed off, as are all the window openings in the facade. Above spandrels of guilloche carvings, the upper windows are in pairs, separated by carved T-shaped mullions. The columns separating the bays have Ionic capitals. The arches are outlined by cable moldings and the spandrels are ornamented by comic masks.

The central unit is enclosed on each side by projecting rusticated piers with ocular and aedicular windows in vertical arrangement. The side bays have two levels of hooded window openings, the upper ones arched. The cornice features a paneled frieze and elaborately carved pediments have carved tympana and scrolled tops flanking a lyre finial. The top level of the cornice has cartouches in the central bay and terminating the ends of the cornice. A copper tile-covered mansard is just visible above the cornice, with five oculi in the center. The north elevation, exposed by the demolition of the Stanley Theater in 1965, shows the characteristic roofline of the theater, with the gabled stage house at the west end of the lot.

The interior of the Mayfair has a lowered ceiling added in 1941 and the theater was completely remodeled in the early 1960's fora local premiere. The ceiling conceals the steeply raked original balcony levels in a horseshoe arc supported by iron columns with fan-shaped tops. The vault dome is painted in a romantic pictorial style.