MAJESTIC THEATRE, BOSTON, MASS.
MADE IN GERMANY, REICHNER BROS.,
PUBLISHERS, BOSTON, MUNCHEN, LEIPZIG.

TREMONT THEATRE, BOSTON, MASS.
MADE IN GERMANY, REICHNER BROS.,
PUBLISHERS, BOSTON, MUNCHEN, LEIPZIG.

Majestic Theatre (1903 - )
219 Tremont Street

Now known as the Emerson Majestic, after Emerson College, this theater is the only known local building designed by John Galen Howard. Built in opulent style reminiscent of Viennese Rococo, the Majestic is also the first Boston playhouse to make extensive use of electricity, integrating lighting fixtures into its architectural design. In January 28, 1941, the Majestic premiered Disney's Fantasia and became a first run movie house by 1945. Eventually, the theater was rechristened the Saxon and, as the Cutler Majestic Theatre, is now managed by Emerson College. Much of the MajesticÕs original splendor survives to this day.

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Tremont Theatre (1889 - 1949)
176 Tremont Street

Several Boston playhouses were named Tremont Theatre (built in 1827, 1889 and 1908, respectively), but the major one represented in the Athenaeum's playbill collection is the second Tremont built in 1889 by J. B. McElfatrick and Sons, and located on Tremont Street at the corner of Avery. Extremely successful and fashionable in the 1890s, this theater is famous for hosting the great Sarah Bernhardt, who enraptured Bostonians in 1891 with her performance of La Tosca.

In his September, 1895 article in Bostonian Magazine Atherton Brownell wrote about the Tremont Theatre: ''The Tremont Theatre may fairly be called the first of the modern theatres of Boston, i.e. the first to be built from the ground up for the purpose for which it was designed from modern plans. The result is that it is most complete in every way, not only from an architectural standpoint, but also as decorations and accessories. As it was opened by the British comedian Mr. Charles Wyndham that seemed to give it a certain foreign stamp, which later events have carried out and accentuated. Being built by Messrs. Henry E. Abbey and John B. Schoeffel, it is but natural that their attractions from abroad should be seen at this house. Being international managers, they control very largely the American tours of the world's greatest artists; and thus it comes that the Tremont Theatre has been seen in a short space of time such world famous players as Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, Coquelin, Sarah Bernhardt, Mounet-Sully, and Rejane. With this class of attractions as a foundation the standing of the theatre is beyond question, especially as the standard is kept up in other lines. The theatre is cosy, and of just the right size to admit of a wide variety of productions.''

In 1913, the Tremont was adapted to a feature length movie theater. When D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation opened at the Tremont in 1915, a riot broke out. Until that time, motion pictures had been a relatively minor entertainment medium, but Griffith's pioneering albeit admittedly racist epic inaugurated a new era for films and film making. Twelve years later, the first sound film, The Jazz Singer, was also seen here. By 1945, Tremont Theatre, along with Old South and Majestic, was a first run movie house for lower quality films. One might say that the Tremont Theatre exemplified the cultural transitions of an era when many ''legitimate'' stage theaters were either razed or converted into movie houses featuring the new entertainment of choice. In 1947 the Tremont became a movie theater named the Astor and briefly, before its demise, a juice bar. Loew's Boston Common Theater multiplex now occupies the site.