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The theatre opened on May 14, 1928, as the Emboyd — Clyde W. Quimby named his flagship for his mother, joining the first syllable of her name to her maiden name, Boyd. Construction had begun in 1926; the builder was Max Irmscher of Fort Wayne, and the complex cost $1.5 million. Fort Wayne's A. M. Strauss was the architect of the building, and John Eberson of Chicago, the most famous theatre designer in America, designed the interior. The Emboyd is not one of Eberson's signature "atmospheric" theatres with a starlit sky; it is a Spanish Revival courtyard palace of terra cotta, Italian mosaic floors and ornate molded plaster. It seated 2,763 at opening (2,471 today), carried a vertical blade sign of five and a half tons and 3,500 light bulbs — believed the largest sign in Indiana — at a cost of $15,000, and was equipped with a Grande Page theatre organ, which remains in place and is still played. Around its north and west sides wraps the seven-story Indiana Hotel, 250 rooms, opened the same year.
Renamed the Embassy in 1952 under new management, the theatre outlasted the movie-palace era downtown but closed and stood under threat of demolition in 1972. A citizens' campaign led by Robert Goldstine raised $250,000 to save it; the Embassy Theatre Foundation agreed to purchase the building in 1974 and completed the purchase in June 1975, and in 1975 the Embassy Theatre and Indiana Hotel were listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Page organ was restored between 1976 and 1996, and the Indiana Hotel's lobby and mezzanine were later restored as event space. The Embassy, long the Fort Wayne Philharmonic's home, is Fort Wayne's only surviving movie palace.
Sources: The History Center, Fort Wayne, object record for the Emboyd Theatre (which gives the opening date as May 28, 1928 — see the note file); Theatre Organ journal, Embassy history (Fall 1964 and 1975 issues), for the May 14, 1928 opening and the 2,763 seats; Indiana Landmarks, "Flights of Fantasy: Indiana's Eberson-Designed Theaters" (2019); West Central Neighborhood Association, Historic Buildings and Structures; Wikipedia, "Embassy Theatre (Fort Wayne)" (National Register reference no. 75000041).