The Forbidden City has a branch office in downtown Seattle. The 5th Avenue Theatre, opened in September 1926 inside the Skinner Building at 1308 5th Avenue, has been called the largest and most authentic example of traditional Chinese timber architecture and decoration outside Asia: architect Robert C. Reamer and Norwegian-born designer Gustav Liljestrom modelled the interior on the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heavenly Peace and the Summer Palace, working from Ernst Boerschmann's illustrated Chinesische Architektur - and beat Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theatre to opening by eight months. Built as a lavish movie palace and vaudeville house running combined film-and-stage programs twelve hours a day, the theatre survived where its peers fell: after closing in 1978, a coalition of local companies and arts patrons funded a 2.6-million-dollar restoration, and the reopening production - the national tour of a brand-new musical called Annie - ran 77 sold-out performances. The Skinner Building joined the National Register of Historic Places the same year the theatre went dark, guaranteeing the plaster dragons and imperial guard lions their future. Since 1989 The 5th has produced its own musicals to Broadway standard, reshaping the out-of-town tryout in the process: the 2002 world premiere of Hairspray went from this stage to Broadway and a Best Musical Tony, and the house count now runs to twenty new musicals produced, nine Broadway transfers and fourteen Tony Awards including a second Best Musical for Memphis. Roughly 2,100 seats, a resident non-profit company and a season mixing homegrown productions with touring Broadway keep the room busy year-round. The auditorium's crowning detail repays a look up: the great coffered dome centres on a coiling five-clawed dragon above a pearl-shaped chandelier - the Pearl of Perfection of Chinese tradition - and the pair of guardian lions flanking the lobby stairs have watched the balcony crowd since 1926. Robert Reamer's other landmarks, from Yellowstone's Old Faithful Inn to Bellingham's Mount Baker Theatre, give the room its architectural pedigree; Seattle simply calls it The 5th.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 1308 5th Avenue, Seattle, WA, United States, 98101

Website: https://www.5thavenue.org

Capacity: 2100

Opening Date: 01/09/1926

Accessible