Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:32:00

Architect Thomas W. Lamb called it a palace for the average man, and Columbus raised two million dollars in under a year to stop the wrecking ball taking it. The Ohio Theatre at 39 East State Street, across from the Statehouse, is the official State Theatre of Ohio. The opening belonged to the movie-palace golden age: built by the Loew's chain with United Artists, the Spanish Baroque house premiered on 17 March 1928 with Greta Garbo's silent The Divine Woman, its own orchestra, and a Robert-Morton theatre organ that still plays today. The vaudeville roster reads like a century of entertainment history: Milton Berle, Cab Calloway, Buddy Ebsen, Jean Harlow, Ginger Rogers and a young violin-carrying emcee named Jack Benny all worked the stage between films. The rescue defined the city's arts infrastructure: when Loew's closed the house in February 1969 and a developer planned demolition, the Save the Ohio campaign birthed the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, which bought the building, restored it through the 1970s and won National Historic Landmark designation in 1977. The theatre now runs more than 100 performances a year at 2,791 seats: BalletMet, Broadway in Columbus and the Columbus Symphony share the calendar with touring artists from Yo-Yo Ma to Lyle Lovett, under a 21-foot chandelier in a house painted to resemble a Spanish courtyard beneath a starlit sky. Practical notes: the State Street location sits on Capitol Square with COTA lines and downtown garages at the door; the organ pre-shows before classic film screenings are the building's signature summer tradition, and the loge offers the best blend of proximity and ceiling view. The farewell that never was makes the survival sweeter: Loew's final act in February 1969 was a nostalgic organ concert by Roger Garrett, sinking into the orchestra pit to Auld Lang Syne - within months the demolition plan surfaced, the campaign formed, and the pit organ has been rising ever since.