08/17/2026
opened September 21, 1928, on Woodward Avenue as “the most magnificent Temple of Amusement in the World.” Architect C. Howard Crane — who’d already designed over 250 theaters by then — called it his best work. He wasn’t building a movie house. He was building an escape: Far Eastern, Indian, Persian, and Egyptian motifs fused into one auditorium, a two-thousand-pound chandelier hanging from a tent-like dome, a six-story lobby lined in blood-red marble and gold.
At just over 5,000 seats, it’s still the largest continually-operating theater in the country. Elvis played it in ’56. It ran kung-fu and horror double features through the ’70s. By the ’80s it was falling apart — until the Ilitch family put $12 million into bringing it back, reopening in 1988 with Smokey Robinson on stage.
It’s still standing 2 hours from where this brand started.
On view.
