The Keith-Albee Theatre is a performing arts center in downtown Huntington, West Virginia, United States. It was named after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation, one of the leading traveling vaudeville performance companies of the early 20th century, in an effort to convince the corporation's directors to make Huntington a regular stop.
The Keith-Albee Theatre opened to the public on May 7, 1928. Brothers A. B. and S. J. Hyman of Huntington built the theater and added it to roster of theaters, along with the State, Orpheum and Huntington.
The new theater was constructed under the supervision of vaudeville tycoons B. F. Keith and Edward Albee and eventually became part of their Keith-Albee circuit, a top-tier vaudeville tour along the East Coast of the United States. The Scottish-born architect Thomas W. Lamb, who designed the Keith-Albee, also designed approximately 150 theaters around the world. (Only 43 of these are still open; 71 have been demolished.)
Keith and Albee oversaw the construction of two other Lamb-designed theaters at the same time: The Stanley Theater in Utica, New York, which has since been completely renovated and hosts a variety of performances; and Keith's Theater in Flushing, New York, which sits barren and gutted, awaiting demolition.
Seating approximately 3,000 patrons, the Keith-Albee exemplified the opulence and grandeur of the 1920s with a Mexican Baroque design style. Intricate plasterwork, chandeliers, and balconies created an atmosphere of sophistication, along with cosmetic rooms, smoking rooms, and fireplaces in men’s and women’s restrooms adjoining the main lobby.
The Keith-Albee cost $2 million USD to construct in 1928[3] and was dubbed a “temple of amusement” by Huntington's Herald-Dispatch newspaper. The opening day performance on May 8, 1928, featured performer Rae Samuels, nicknamed the “Blue Streak of Vaudeville.”
The Keith-Albee originally was equipped with a Wurlitzer organ to accompany live performances and motion pictures. The organ was said to be capable of creating almost any sound effect needed for the silent films shown in the theater. The organ was removed and sold in the 1950s after live musical accompaniment had lost some of its appeal. Following an effort by Huntington native Robert Edmunds and his Huntington Theatre Organ Project, a 1927 Wurlitzer organ was purchased and reinstalled in the Keith-Albee in 2001.
The Marshall Artists Series, formed in 1936 and moved to the Keith-Albee in 1939, is a nonprofit organization based at Marshall University that continues to bring a variety of entertainment to Huntington, such as film festivals, Broadway shows, orchestras, and comedians.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Keith-Albee and the Hyman family began to feel the impact of competition from the growing television and motion picture industries. Faced with significant competition from surround-sound multiplexes, the Hymans divided the Keith-Albee's main auditorium into three movie theaters. Two smaller theaters were constructed in the east and west sections of the main auditorium. A fourth theater was later added in a street-facing retail space and has since become a screening room.
In celebration of its 50th anniversary in 1978, the Keith-Albee featured a recreation of a vaudeville show starring singer Rudy Vallee.
In 2006, the Keith-Albee ended its run as a functioning movie theater and, after almost 80 years of ownership, the Hyman family donated it to the Marshall University Foundation, which in turn passed it over to the newly formed Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center Foundation (KAPAC).
As vaudeville suffered a major decline in the 1930s, the Keith-Albee began to run movies, as did its nearby competitors such as the Cinema and Camelot.
By the 1970s, grand movie houses were being torn down to make way for larger cinemas. A group of citizens fought to save the theatre from closure demolition
In 1986, the Keith-Albee was placed on the National Register of Historical Places in conjunction with several blocks of downtown Huntington.
The Marshall University Foundation took a 99-year lease on the theatre in 1990 and conducted renovations.
In 2004, a new cinema opened in the nearby Pullman Square development. This time, the competition proved insurmountable[4], and on January 22, 2006, the Keith-Albee ceased being an active movie theater and became a performing arts center under the management of the Marshall University Foundation[5] Contractors and volunteers restored portions of the theatre to their original form. The partitions dividing the main auditorium into three theaters were removed[6]
In March 2024, KAPAC was in the midst of a $12 million capital campaign to continue the historic preservation and revitalization of the Keith-Albee. The theater has become a downtown Huntington center for community development, artistic enrichment and new programming for adults, students and children.
