File:Coliseum Theatre film poster, Seattle, June 10-19, 1922 (MOHAI 13571).jpg

English:

By 1915, Seattle's downtown commercial core was booming. In March 1915, local lumber baron and businessman C. D. Stimson leased lots on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Pike Street to the newly-formed Coliseum Company to build a theater designed specifically for movies, then called photoplays. The Coliseum Photo Playhouse was designed by noted theater architect B. Marcus Priteca, and the elegant venue opened on January 8, 1916. In addition to the shows, features included a large smoking room for men, large restrooms for women, a children's playroom, caged songbirds, and lavish floral arrangements.

Managed at first by The Greater Theatres Company, the theater remained Seattle's premier movie house into the 1980s, when it lost out to suburban multiplexes. The Coliseum closed in 1990 but was reborn as a Banana Republic store in 1994 with some of its original elegance still intact.

This poster advertises "The Infidel," a motion picture shown at the Coliseum Theatre from June 10-19, 1922. A photo of the movie's star, Katherine MacDonald, playing a mandolin decorates this poster.

Caption information source: "Films," The Seattle Daily Times, March 7, 1915, p. 1; May 9, 1915, p. 5; January 2, 1916, p. 24. June 15, 1922, p. 11. Caption information source: "Coliseum Theater opens in Seattle on January 8, 1916," by Eric L. Flom, HistoryLink.org Essay 2538.

• Subjects (LCTGM): Motion pictures; Posters