The Ambassador Theatre was a lavish

movie palace A movie palace (or picture palace in the United Kingdom) is any of the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opening every year between 192 ...

-type theater in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

, designed by the architectural firm of

Rapp and Rapp C. W. & George L. Rapp, commonly known as Rapp & Rapp, was an American architectural firm famed for the design of movie palaces and other theatres. Active from 1906 to 1965 and based in Chicago, the office designed over 400 theatres, includ ...

. A landmark of rococo 1920s theater design, it opened in 1926 and was demolished in 1997.

Origins

As early as January 1925, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch mentioned plans for a 22-story office building containing a Skouras Brothers theater. The entire structure was to cost $2.5 million. What was eventually constructed was a 17-story building, with a 3,000-seat theater—designed by Rapp & Rapp—occupying the first six stories. The theater cost $5 million and the organ alone cost $115,000. The grand opening was held on August 26, 1926, and the Ambassador welcomed 2.6 million patrons in its first year. The Skouras Brothers Co,

Spyros Skouras Spyros Panagiotis Skouras (; gr, Σπύρος Σκούρας; March 28, 1893 – August 16, 1971) was a Greek-American motion picture pioneer and film executive who was the president of 20th Century-Fox from 1942 to 1962. He resigned June 27, 19 ...

George Skouras George P. Skouras (; gr, Γεώργιος Σκούρας; 1896–1964) was an American movie executive and president of United Artists Theatres, born in Skourohorion, Greece. He was one of ten children of a sheep herder and his wife. He and two ...

and

Charles Skouras Charles P. Skouras (; gr, Κάρολος Σκούρας; 1889–1954) was an American movie executive and president of Fox West Coast, born in Skourohorion, Greece. He and his two brothers, George Skouras and Spyros Skouras, came from Greece ...

, whose dream of building a world-class movie palace in downtown

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

was grandly realized in 1926 when the $5.5 million Ambassador Theatre Building opened on prime real estate at the northwest corner of Locust and Seventh streets. The 17-story structure which housed the luxurious cinema also added an impressive tall office block to the city's skyline. Less than two decades earlier the three Skouras brothers arrived in

from their native

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

to become the results of rags to riches

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

success stories.Ilias Chrissochoidis (ed.)
''Spyros P. Skouras, Memoirs (1893-1953)''
(Stanford, 2013), 80.

Design

The Skourases chose Rapp & Rapp, Chicago's famed theater architects, to design the 3,000-seat Ambassador. The firm's local debut, the St. Louis Theater (now

Powell Symphony Hall Powell Hall (formerly known as the St. Louis Theater and Powell Symphony Hall) is the home of the St. Louis Symphony. It was named after Walter S. Powell, a local St. Louis businessman, whose widow donated $1 million towards the purchase and use ...

), was completed in 1925 on Grand Boulevard. In addition to Windy City achievements such as the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Southtown, and Uptown theaters, the brothers C. W. and George Rapp drew up plans in the 1920s for notable theater-

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

hybrids that included New York City's 29-story

Paramount Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to: Entertainment and music companies * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. The following busin ...

(1926);

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

's 21-story

Palace A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...

(1922); and the 22-story

Oriental The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

whose top stories housed the

Masonic Lodge A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...

halls. In the Ambassador, Rapp & Rapp expanded the firm's typical

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

Sun King style, a rendition of

French Renaissance The French Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in France between the 15th and early 17th centuries. The period is associated with the pan-European Renaissance, a word first used by the French historian Jules Michelet to define th ...

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

motifs for which they were best-known. The architects crowned the Ambassador with a distinctive

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

of terra cotta

griffins The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (Ancient Greek: , ''gryps''; Classical Latin: ''grȳps'' or ''grȳpus''; Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back ...

—a motif also displayed in two prominent New York skyscrapers of the period. Gazing across the rooftops, the griffins were well-placed as traditional guardians of treasure in antiquity. The planar quality of the cornice and flattened treatment of the griffins suggest the influence of modernist trends. The cornice marked a departure from older style. more elaborated cornices of high relief, often punctuated by lion heads. To announce the theatre portion of the tall Ambassador Building,

designed a monumental arcade of giant windows along Locust Street, wrapping the corner of Seventh. Thirty feet high, these windows were richly embellished with finely detailed terra cotta in Renaissance style. Highly modeled theater masks of comedy and tragedy were featured on cartouche pier and

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...

panels. The three floors of theater offices fronting Seventh Street were appropriately distinguished by terra cotta spandrel panels featuring regal pairs of

sphinxes A sphinx ( , grc, σφίγξ , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon. In Greek tradition, the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of ...

Egyptian Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...

symbols of power.

Demise

The theater closed in 1997 and was demolished. Some important architectural elements were preserved by the

National Building Arts Center The National Building Arts Center (NBAC) is a large collection of significant architectural, structural, and industrial items saved before these elements from the built environment are demolished. It is the physical collection of the St. Louis Bui ...

References

External links

Cinema Tour

St. Louis Building Art Foundation
*
Page for the Ambassador at the ''Cinema Treasures'' website
{{Authority control Theatres in St. Louis Cinemas and movie theaters in Missouri Movie palaces Landmarks of St. Louis Skyscraper office buildings in St. Louis Buildings and structures demolished in 1997 1926 establishments in Missouri 1997 disestablishments in Missouri Demolished buildings and structures in St. Louis