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1928 – theatre saved 1972; hotel closed 1966/1971
Theatre operator Clyde Quimby opened the Emboyd Theatre on 14 May 1928 — named for his mother, Emilie Boyd — a 3,100-seat movie palace and vaudeville house at 125 West Jefferson Boulevard, designed by A. M. Strauss and John Eberson, with its Grande Page pipe organ. Wrapped around it stood the seven-story, 250-room Indiana Hotel (opened May 1928, Strauss). In 1952 the theatre and hotel were sold to the Alliance Amusement Corporation and the theatre renamed the Embassy. The Indiana Hotel closed as train traffic fell — theatre histories give 1966; ACGSI gives 1971. In 1972 the owners proposed demolishing the theatre for a parking lot; the Embassy Theatre Foundation, organised under Robert Goldstone, saved it, and the building entered the National Register of Historic Places on 5 September 1975. The theatre operates today as a performing-arts centre; the former hotel floors were restored in a $10 million renovation completed in 2016.
Sources:
- Embassy Theatre, "Our History" — opening 14 May 1928; Quimby and the Emboyd name; the 1952 Alliance sale; the Foundation; the 2016 renovation.
- Cinema Treasures, Embassy Theatre comments — the Indiana Hotel's operation to 1966 (conflicting with ACGSI's 1971 hotel closing).
- ACGSI, "Hotel Indiana" — opened May 1928; closed 1971; the 2016 restoration.