In the early 1900s, Newark became a premier destination for vaudeville audiences. One of the most important venues was the RKO Proctor Palace, and plans are underway to partly restore this landmark.
For decades, Newarkers have passed by this building on Market Street and wondered if the decades of abandonment would spell doom as it did for so many other historic buildings in the city. The auditorium at the Paramount Theater, which dates back to 1886, recently collapsed.
Dave Robinson, principal at SUAD, said that, despite the building’s vacancy since the 1960s, its sturdy condition is largely credited to the former owner’s water-proofing of the property over the years.
“It helped save the masonry, the pointing, and all the steel that’s in here,” Robinson said.
Robinson, whose Newark-based architecture firm is overseeing the project, presented the plans to turn the nine-story building at 114 Market Street into a 38-unit apartment tower to the Landmarks & Historic Preservation Commission, which approved the project.
The restoration only includes the lobby of the theater and the upper stories which were used for office space, and the penthouse, which was used as 1,400 seat cinema. The main auditorium at Proctor Palace, located behind the Market Street building, is a separate lot. There are currently no plans for that building. The city, which owned the rear property until 2015, when it was sold to David, Abraham, and Associates, said the theater would have to be eventually demolished, Jersey Digs reported.
When the Proctor Palace opened in 1915, a reporter for the Newark Evening News called it “one of the most beautiful amusement temples in the country.” That was high praise. The city’s Four Corners theater district was competing with Manhattan, where the owner Frederick Freeman Proctor ran three other theaters – on 23rd Street, 58th, and 125th. In Newark, Proctor Palace vied against nearby venues like the Empire Theater and H.C. Miner’s Newark Theater, which became the Paramount Theater in 1921. In 1922, there were five vaudeville venues in the city. Proctor was the vice president of the United Booking Office of America, which enabled him to get some of the best acts in the nation.
On opening day, the theater had two auditoriums, the larger one with 2,800 seats and another in the penthouse with 1,400 seats. The building also had smoking rooms, tea rooms, a restaurant, and a basement beer hall.
In addition to musical entertainment and comedy, Vaudeville offered circus-like entertainment, including “side shows.” One night in 1927, the show bill included a half-man-half-woman performer, a sword-dancer, and an eight-foot-tall man.
Vaudeville was a natural transition for the theater’s owner, who was a circus performer in his younger days. In fact, Jonathan Ringling from Ringling Brothers was reportedly a pallbearer at Proctor’s funeral.
In 1929, the year Proctor died, he sold all his theaters to Radio Keith Orpheum, hence the name change to RKO Proctor. As Vaudeville’s popularity waned in the 1930s and 1940s, these theaters became retrofitted as movie houses.
Robinson said his firm is working on creating a mural in the lobby that pays homage to the building’s vaudeville and cinema history. It could have digital displays of silent movies along with actual movie theater seats that would be accessible to the public.
The developer behind the project, Reset Capital, who bought the property earlier this year, is already trying to secure building permits, Robinson said.
“Unlike a lot of projects that we bring to boards, this owner is very aggressive,” Robinson. “They’ve purchased the properties already and they want us to get building permits tomorrow.”
Reset Capital plans to restore a nearby three-story brownstone at 126 Market Street, which also earned approval from the Landmarks Commission at the December meeting.
“I’ve walked by this section of Market Street for decades and these buildings, many of them are in bad shape,” Myles Zhang, a member of the Landmarks Commission. “And it’s wonderful to see one of them come back because I think it sets a precedent for what happens in other parts of Newark.”
