Rise, fall of Keith's spotlights life, death of Downtown theaters

A 1942 map of Downtown shows a number of black squares along two city blocks between Vine and Walnut streets, from Fountain Square to Seventh, each square is a theater.

The Albee, the Lyric, the Grand, the Family, the Capitol, the Palace, the Cox, the Shubert, the Times, the Strand, and the Keith’s.

Now they are all gone. One by one they were shuttered then toppled by a wrecking ball, and many of the sites are now used for little more than yet another parking lot.

The B.F. Keith’s Theatre, formerly at 525 Walnut St., may not have been as celebrated as the Albee or as popular as the Palace, but the site had a long theater history that is representative of the glamorous theaters of yesteryear.

The earliest stage at that Walnut Street location between Fifth and Sixth streets was the Fountain Square Theater, which opened Nov. 21, 1892. The 1,800-seat vaudeville house was designed by eminent Cincinnati architect James W. McLaughlin, who designed the Art Museum, the old Main Library, and the zoo buildings.

The theater orientation was peculiar for having its entrance facing Lodge Alley instead of Walnut Street, making it difficult to attract patrons. The question was: “Will they go up the alley?”

Max C. Anderson took over the Fountain Square Theater the next year, and shortly thereafter partnered with Henry M. Ziegler to form the Anderson-Ziegler Company, which brought in high-class vaudeville acts, such as quality singers and comedy sketches, rather than the hodgepodge of anything-goes performers found elsewhere. The theater business picked up and Anderson decided to rebuild.

The theater was “turned around” to have an entrance on Walnut Street and rechristened the Columbia Theatre. When it opened on Oct. 15, 1899, the Columbia was said to have the best location in town with easy access from Vine, Walnut, Fifth and Sixth streets, and was touted as “Cincinnati's most beautiful playhouse.”

Anderson once again ordered a reconstruction in 1909 and hired well-known theater architect J.M. Wood of Chicago. The new design was elegant and classical, with marble panels, Doric columns, crystal chandeliers, a broad marble stairway and mahogany doors. The auditorium was framed with a proscenium arch decorated with a mural of frolicking figures by artist Florian Piexotto.

Detailed descriptions of the New Columbia are courtesy of a souvenir brochure titled “The Evolution of a Great Theatre,” found in the Enquirer archives, that had been handed out to female patrons at the opening on Oct. 10, 1909.

Anderson and Ziegler soon sold the Columbia to Benjamin Franklin Keith, who had theaters in Boston and New York, and the venue had another reopening on Sept. 9, 1910, as B.F. Keith’s Columbia Theater. Columbia was dropped from the name two years later and the theater was simply B.F. Keith’s.

Keith's company later joined with Orpheum as Keith-Albee-Orpheum, and eventually became Radio-Keith-Orpheum, the motion picture studio RKO.

The week of Dec. 13, 1914, the Four Marx Brothers – Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Gummo – made their Cincinnati debut at B.F. Keith’s, performing their musical comedy, “Home Again.” The Enquirer review praised the piano playing of Leonard (Chico) and harp solos by Arthur (Harpo), using their real names instead of their soon-to-be-famous stage names.

In 1921, the theater was encased within a new 12-story office building designed by Rapp & Rapp of Chicago, the premier theater architects at the time. The handsome Keith Theater Building had fine decorative touches above the second floor and between the third-floor windows. The frieze was sculpted and had a row of wagon-wheel windows and larger half-circles on the ends.

A temporary lobby allowed access to the theater while the building was constructed.

Alas, the Keith's succumbed to changing tastes and the vaudeville venue closed on Feb. 4, 1928, and reopened three weeks later with an organ and a modern projection booth to show photoplays, as films were known, starting with Charlie Chaplin’s “The Circus.”

An ornate marquee hung over the entrance with lights spelling out B.F. KEITH’S PHOTOPLAYS.

The theater was modernized and remodeled in 1932 and again in 1946.

Movie star Ginger Rogers appeared in person at the Keith’s on Nov. 27, 1946, for a premiere benefit of her film “The Magnificent Doll” to raise money for the war nurse memorial fund. It seemed the whole town rolled out for the Hollywood-like gala.

As competition from suburban theaters and drive-ins cut into business, in 1959 the theater was refitted with a Todd-AO screen, a curved screen similar to Cinerama that showed 70mm films in wide angle so the audience felt they were in the movie.

But it was all too late. Downtown theaters were failing and falling.

The final curtain closed on Keith’s on Sept. 5, 1965 “in the name of urban renewal,” the Enquirer reported. The building was torn down in July 1966 just as plans were underway to completely re-stage Fountain Square.

The site that began as the Fountain Square Theatre in 1892 is now the Walnut Street entrance to the Fountain Square Garage.