Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Searchlights swept the Sacramento sky on 6 October 1949 as Mario Lanza and Kathryn Grayson arrived to christen the theatre showing their new picture, with Governor Earl Warren - the future Chief Justice - and the city's first woman mayor in the crowd. The Crest Theatre at 1013 K Street was the third act for a site with deep show-business roots: the Empress Theatre, a vaudeville house designed by Lee DeCamp, opened there in 1912, was rebuilt as the Hippodrome in 1918, and ran vaudeville and films together into the 1940s under Fox West Coast Theatres. After the Second World War the Hippodrome was gutted to its outer shell and an entirely new theatre built inside it. The Crest opened with 1,217 seats on a stadium plan and reigned through the 1950s and 1960s as one of Sacramento's premier first-run movie palaces, its Streamline Moderne styling and soaring marquee marking the K Street corridor. As downtown cinema declined in the 1970s the house slid to sub-run fare, closed in the early 1980s, and survived several rescue attempts including a spell as a dinner theatre. Local residents reopened it on 18 November 1986 with the MGM musical Singin' in the Rain - star Donald O'Connor attended in person and snipped a celluloid ribbon across the front doors. The definitive revival came in 1995, when a one-million-dollar restoration returned the 975-seat auditorium to its original Streamline Moderne look, complete with its gold-leaf interior, while two small cinemas were added in the basement. Those subterranean screens closed in the 2010s and were replaced in 2015 by the Empress Tavern, a restaurant whose name honours the building's 1912 origins. The main auditorium, preserved in its unaltered post-1940s state, now works as a multi-purpose theatre: classic revival and specialty films share the calendar with touring bands, comedians, film festivals and lectures. For visitors the Crest is one of the easiest landmarks in the city to find - the restored vertical sign and marquee glow over K Street a few blocks from the State Capitol, in the heart of downtown's revived entertainment strip. It remains the last of Sacramento's great picture palaces still doing the job it was built for, a working stage wrapped in 1949 glamour.