Downtown Memphis keeps its crown jewel right here: the Orpheum Theatre, one of the great surviving movie palaces of the 1920s. The Orpheum opened in 1928 at the southern tip of Beale Street, replacing an earlier theater that had burned down, and it was conceived from the beginning as an experience of pure theatrical excess. The lobby features a massive chandelier, ornate plasterwork, gilded ceilings, and the kind of architectural ambition that believed ordinary people deserved extraordinary surroundings.
During the Great Depression, admission was twenty-five cents and the theater offered air conditioning — a genuine luxury when Memphis summers regularly hit a hundred degrees. The Orpheum hosted vaudeville acts, traveling shows, and films for decades before falling into disrepair. It was saved from demolition in 1977 and painstakingly restored by a group of citizens who understood that a city without its beautiful old buildings loses something essential about its identity.
Today it hosts Broadway touring productions, concerts, and classic film series. The ghost of a young girl named Mary is said to haunt the mezzanine. The Orpheum has always known how to put on a show.