Proctor's Theatre

F. F. Proctor built his second Schenectady house at a cost of a million and a half dollars and opened it on 27 December 1926 with a silent film; Thomas Lamb designed it, and the Wurlitzer organ failed on the opening night without denting the audience's enthusiasm. Vaudeville gave way to cinema, cinema to decline, and by the 1970s demolition was a live prospect; the campaign that saved the building created an arts district around it. A 1931 Wurlitzer known as Goldie was donated in 1984 to replace the lost original and restored by the American Theatre Organ Society. A renovation completed in 2007 added two further auditoriums to the complex, now simply called Proctors, whose main theatre seats some 2,700 for touring musicals, concerts and film.