Metropolitan Theatre

Houston's leading commercial architect of the 1920s, Alfred C. Finn, designed the Metropolitan for developer Jesse H. Jones beside Jones's sixteen-story Lamar Hotel on Main Street. Cinema Treasures puts the cost at $2,000,000. Publix Theatres opened it on Christmas Day 1926 with Bebe Daniels in Stranded in Paris. Within ten months two more theaters went up on the same stretch of Main: the neighboring Loew's State, also by Finn, and the Kirby, across Main and a block down.

The Metropolitan was Houston's Egyptian palace. Millions of ceramic tiles formed floor and wall mosaics of pharaohs and ancient Egyptian symbols, and a sphinx guarded the approaches to the balcony. The auditorium held about 2,293 people. A three-manual, 15-rank Wurlitzer organ, opened by organist George Latsh, accompanied the shows, and a hydraulic pit lifted the Metropolitan Orchestra into view for stage presentations. Houston film historian David Welling describes its Egyptian theme as over the top and ranks the Metropolitan with the 1923 Majestic and Loew's State as the high point of 1920s movie palace design in the city.

Interstate Theatres ran the Metropolitan from the early 1940s. On August 9, 1956, it hosted the world premiere of Thrillarama, one of the Cinerama-style processes of the period, which played there for one week. ABC Interstate closed the Metropolitan on December 31, 1972. Its Wurlitzer was removed that year and saved; Cinema Treasures reports that it was installed in the main auditorium of Houston Community College. The building was demolished in 1973. As Welling notes, all of Houston's grand downtown picture palaces, the Majestic, Loew's State, Metropolitan, Queen, and Kirby, are now gone.