Exploring an Abandoned Movie Theater - Incredible Ornate Design! 

I'm very tempted to ask if you could go back to those theaters once they're fully restored because very rarely do we get to the chance to see and explore the building be brought back to life

Those shots of the lobby with the 1920’s music hauntingly playing in the background... man you wish to go back in time and be there when it was active and there was people talking, laughing, drinking there.

I get scared going from the bathroom back to my bed at night, then there’s these guys

I can just imagine going to the theatre when this place was in its prime. It must’ve been such an enchanting experience.

Quality content every. Time. That’s why I love proper people.

Several years ago I was in talks with the city to acquire the Majestic, Palace, Savoy complex, but locals threatened lawsuits to keep the ownership local; and it was not worth the legal costs, plus $ MILLIONS in renovation costs. That 2nd floor hotel lobby, had a gangland murder take place (I believe 2 dead) back in the days. A police officer has the keys to the complex and occasionally takes people on tours. The lead paint removal alone would be prohibitive, then new wiring and plumbing. They built the new police station right behind the complex. Streetcars used to go past the complex and many people rode the streetcars to events at the complex. There is another Palace theater in CT that was designed after this one (or vise-versa), but it is far smaller; and restored.. I'd still love to take on the restoration of the complex, but I'm 73 now and it'd take at least 10 years to renovate the complex.

I live 5 min away from this theater and always wondered what the inside looked like. Thanks proper people for make this video

I'm so glad this is being restored and not destroyed. Most places they would just tear down.

When you explore a place could you show some pictures of what it looked like before it fell into disrepair?

Watching the Proper People while it's raining is a mood that I live for (also while in a comfy bed... and maybe hot cocoa... just saying)

The balconies near the stage reminded me of Statler and Waldorf on the Muppets.

There was organ pipes in the second theater... Too bad they didn't find the organ :( .. Also found an add for those Peerless projectors from 1954... helps situate when they're from.

when yall turned on that spinning light; everything felt so magical. yall make the BEST videos

It is good to see these places knowing that are going to be saved and restored to their period splendor. The Proper People present these places very well. I'm really enjoying the lack of rattle can graffiti and gratuitous vandalism. That just enhances the whole experience.

It's amazing how much detail is still left even after it's been abandoned for so long.

Bryan: "The candy bar is still here..." Me: "Ooooo." Bryan: "Don't think there's much candy left though..." Me: "Damnit. At least check."

Would be great if you inserted photos of these places "in their glory" to compare to your video

I just finished binge watching all of your vids. Psyched for a new one.

18:38 That is a dual "Magic Lantern" projector. There were large glass slides with various images like clouds, etc. that would be projected onto the screen and curtains with that projector. They all used carbon arc lamps back then.

my dad took me to movies in theaters like this in the 1970's when i was a kid,the black licorice and real butter on the pop corn (jaws,star wars,moonraker) it's almost impossible to believe it was real now - he's long gone now but my dad was a good guy

I found these guys when the abandoned mall was on my recommendation one day and since then ive been watching them everyday after i get off work. Today I finally finished watching ALL of their uploads... Im excited to see what their upcoming trip has to offer! I also made thier Equinox theme song my ringtone so yeah you can say im a fan! Great job Michael and Bryan!! Can't wait for more!

Oh wow! What magnificent theatres. The reason for two projectors is that a spool only held two thousand feet of film which lasted for about eighteen minutes. Every eighteen minutes we had to change from one projector to the other. While one was running you had to prepare the other projector to run again. The view you provided of the projectors wasn't adequate for me to tell if the projector heads were still in front of the arc houses or not. I never ran machines with Peerless arcs on them but my recollection is that they were one of the better makes. The other units may have been slide projectors. We used to show advertising slides before the show and during intermission. Many thanks for the tour. In future if you find projectors I, for one, would be very happy if you spent a little more time on them.

"Because this is a nighttime exploration, we have to be careful where we shine our lights to avoid being noticed..." *10 minutes later:* 8:59

I live in London so I'm somewhat spoilt for beautiful looking buildings, but this is stunning. I can't fathom why people wouldn't want to use such a beautiful building for years at a time.

A wonderful episode. Thank you. So many of these opulent theaters were created in the 20s and 30s during the great depression when spending a few hours in the afternoon was a way for many people of modest means to escape the drudgery of their everyday lives for a few hours. Then in the evenings the well to do could go to see and be seen. My grandmother remembers seeing Gone With The Wind first run for 25 cents. Hard to believe. The design of those wonderful projectors is called streamlining.

During WW2 my great grandmother would hold my very young grandmothers hand and walk down the street to the Majestic Theater every weekend to watch as the projectors lit up those halls with latest film reels of our troops overseas. My great grandfather was in the 101st airborne and performed many jumps. But a German flak round finally got him one night over Bastogne and severely injured his left arm. After he landed, some other men picked him up in a Willy's jeep in an effort to rally the freshly landed troops into a more formally structured operation. Well the jeep broke down that night and wouldn't you know it, he was the only one who knew how to fix it! Before the war he had worked on the old giant Diamond T trucks as a mechanic. So he got out of the jeep at night in the cold, his arm severely wounded, and he got that jeep running and got them to safety in a jiffy! They got him to the medics and eventually transferred him to a formal hospital where a fellow serving family member happened to bump into him! He was able to get a letter out to his wife and daughter letting them know as much as he was allowed to tell them. In a cleverly worded way he as able to let them know he was wounded but safe without getting in trouble. They would have received that letter and walked into that great theater the next weekend feeling a mixture of relief, joy, and probably some new form of anxiety about what would happen next. All that history echoes through the silent halls of that theater... countless stories both remembered and forgotten. I post this so that one of those stories is remembered.

I believe the theaters you are showing is Bridgeport CT. I am a stagehand and used to work in CT. One of my stagehand friends worked in both of the theaters. He would tell me stories of working in both. The stagehands would go to the train station and unload the scenery from the train cars, load on to a truck and set the show up in the theaters. Glad to hear they are finally fixing them up. Thanks for the video.

I would absolutely love to go back in time and experience this theater!

Majestic is right here in my home town, I drive by it everyday for work. Remains untouched so badly I’d love to go in to see it’s beauty!!

I'm so happy these theaters are able to be restored and renovated. I wish the same could be for other ones in need of restoration as well.

I own two theater pipe organs. The one in my house came from the Linwood-LaSalle theater in Detroit.

The amount of detail in these places is always incredible!! Like at around 17:22 in the video you can just see through the dust and see a painting on the roof of the candy bar. You just don't see details like that anymore! It makes me really sad that these places, these beautiful places, just get left there. Completely untouched. Completely unheard of. Completely forgotten. Completely unseen except by explorers... :/

We will never see the likes of such beautiful architecture and attention to detail again..sadly.

This is astounding. I swore at the screen multiple times due to the sheer beauty.

I,m from Bridgeport originally. In my youth I spent many hours in this theatre watching Saturday afternoon cartoons. Thanks for the memories.

Amazing place! That painted curtain is known as a Fire Curtain which is used to keep a fire from spreading to the other side. Usually it’s hooked to a thin rope on the side of the stage which can be cut in an emergency and the curtain will come down. Very commonly they are painted ornately in old theatre buildings. Great work!

My first comment for you gents ever, although my wife and I have watched nearly all of your content. Two thoughts: If you have footage of the pipe organ in this theater, we would absolutely love to see it. Even if it were just a short clip, perhaps with commentary on the history as you do so well. The history of just the fact that the organs exist in theaters is interesting enough, but the specific history of a given organ can also be really interesting. Second, you guys are so much more professional with your approach than some of the other channels, I bet you could easily submit to management of locations where there are in-use areas with disused back-areas. The history that you add to the clips would entice them to allow you into their back-areas because they could get attention and excitement from your community for their locations. I think you've done live sites with permission a few times. If you haven't thought of creating a video for the purposes of pitching to their management to make it easier for you to do, I think it would work incredibly well.

Wow, how gorgeous this place must have been in its day

I had an opportunity to visit a few beautiful theaters similar to the one in this video. Way back when they were in their final years of operation during the early 1970's. Those theaters were relegated to showing second run, "B" movies, and sometimes "double features" for very few customers. Movie goers at the time wanted the huge new shopping mall theaters, and so the grand old architecture of an earlier time, was left behind. I was a bit saddened as I watched this video knowing that our younger generations will never get to experience ditching school for an afternoon, going downtown, walking into these wonderful palatial interior spaces, smell the freshly made popcorn, and carefully sneak up into the darkened balcony, to spend a few hours watching a film on the gigantic silver screen with a friend or two. It seems those days are gone forever, but we can take a trip back in time, thanks to your videos.

I went through the San Jose FOX Theater prior to its restoration.... so much history! so good to see these old palaces being restored!

Thank god vandals, scrapers and graffiti missed this beautiful theater.

18:06 That is such a cool shot! You can really tell how much talent and effort goes into these videos.

Oh my goodness, these two theaters are absolutely incredible!! That much marble was quite a surprise. They spared no expense when building these gems. The pipes for the organ, the painted curtain, the architecture and painting, the projectors, and The Candy Bar were all amazing features! Fantastic explore/video guys!! Hope you’re able to go back after restoration is complete. Thanks for taking us along with you!! 😊

the pure excitement bryan had when turning on those spinning lights is positively contagious

The spinning light was my favorite part for sure.

What gorgeous architecture! That Candy Bar sign... 🥰🥰🥰

This is cool. Beyond words, when looking at the lit places in each theater. The ambiance...beyond words. Thank you Proper People.

that second one had pipes for the organ they played to accompany the silent films in the 20s So awesome!

The thing I like about you is that you don’t do all that click bait stuff like u know

I love that you don’t try do weekly vids and because of that each time a vid is out the quality is amazing

I would suggest you go to the Elgin and Wintergarden theatres in Toronto. They do tours with historical information given by folks who are passionate about the theatre. It's one of the few double-decker theatres in North America and maybe the only active one at this point. It's not an abandon exploration, but it made an impression on me when we went there during open doors Toronto. Perhaps one of the most fascinating things is that the Wintergarden was boarded off (They made a fake wall at a stairwell) while the lower theatre was still operational, to the point that people didn't know it existed.

The sheer, simple joy you got out of that spinning light made me smile!

5:50 y’all notice someone walking on the top balcony?

Beautiful ! yet heartbreaking for an age gone by.

As Always, you never let us down!! These theatre’s are Incredibly Beautiful , even in their current condition !! How exciting it would be to be able to visit them when finished! I too, love the architecture from that time period!! These buildings were meant to last through time!! You can almost feel the pride of those who designed and constructed them! 👌👌

So weird to look at these places and think about the multiple generations in the past that lived their lives enjoying these theaters. Generations now completely buried in the past. My dad was born in ‘48. Can’t imagine being a person his age with memories of this place with his parents, and then seeing them again on this video. Talk about flashbacks!

21:02 If you're getting a bit tried of walking around exploring abandoned places you could do videos where you guys camp for the night in interesting locations or environments. That video where you guys camped on top of a tower in the fog is in my top 10. It doesn't need to be URBEX/abandoned to be an awesome Proper People video.

Omg! Those are in my home town! So cool to watch this as they were always abandoned in my lifetime. My parents would tell me stories about how grand it was!

21:38 I love it how in every episode you find something to laugh about but in that normal, simple way 😊 (not exaggerating or disrespecting). Either way, it's a beautiful location!

A rare chance to see a majestic building that has not been set on fire or vandalised. A true gem.

It's so magnificent seeing old historic theaters . 👍

Hope these old Theaters can be save, such history. Look at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, and the Emerald Theatre in Mt. Clemens, MI. What they once were to what they are now.

You both should come to Rockford, IL and venture into a few of our old buildings like Testers who made models and paint for the models, Barbara Colman, the old Elco Textron building where I used to work as a tool & die. The floors are wooden blocks instead of cement. We still have buildings at the airport that were built back in the 40's when the airport was an Army base called Camp Grant. There is also Rockford Products

Wow! Those two places are amazingly beautiful! You could almost hear the happy sounds of being there and whirring and clicking of the projectors.

I really hope they restore it. It’s in Bridgeport I think. I used to live close by and never heard of it. Excellent videoooooo 😍!

That spinning light needed one more thing . Take that 15 or 20 second clip add a sound of something winding up . Keep giggles in . But also add your Intro Music .

Such _exquisite_ theatres. I'm so happy to know that the Majestic is being renovated to serve once again as a playhouse. I'm curious to see what becomes of the Palace, though. I definitely do agree that we should hang on to these architectural masterpieces. Though even when decaying, their beauty is very much evident. Thank you so much for exploring these places. Theatres like these are my favourite spaces in all the world.

If you want to see a similar theatre that's still active, there's another Palace theatre in Waterbury, CT. Having been there & danced on the stage there, watching this video was a major trip! It really looks so similar (and being that they had the same name) it was like seeing the theatre I grew up in gone apocalypse lol.

Years ago my friend had access to one of those theaters through proper channels, i got to got to go in and check it out with him in its state of decay. It was around 2012

The Met Theater in Philadelphia was saved.. Historic theater, and was saved and fully restored as a concert venue..

Absolutely excellent explore, guys! I am so very glad that you got to film this amazing location - and that you share what you see!! Well done, very well done!

Great work as always guys!!! I'm really happy to see/and hear such great artwork is being preserved.

1:40 I’m getting Tower of Terror vibes Edit: I didn’t realize he said it later in the video.

Absolutely stunning!! Your best yet . We have a few similar design theatres in Australia (. Melbourne Regent )that have been restored . Many have been demolished though

So many great explores this year! I wasn't expecting even more. Great documentary!

Great video as always. Love you guys don’t ever stop exploring

Just think of the sound @ 21:05 that the pipe organ makes....WOW

For those wanting to Google more on these theaters, they are specifically "Poli's Majestic and Palace Theaters" in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Not the Palace Theater in Waterbury, Connecticut, which coincidentally all three were opened in 1922.

Thank you so much for appreciating and exploring these properties and seeing the amazing places that they were and still are

What you're saying at around 21:20 really stands out through the whole video; you guys seemed absolutely delighted with the entire place and it's really refreshing to watch. When you two are clearly enjoying a location, it translates over to us and makes us enjoy the video even more.

Nobody would build something as ostentatious as this today. We're only focusing on efficiency now. Wonder where this is going 20+ years from now.

A gorgeous cinema, reduced to showing porn. A theater in my city held the same fate.

Stunning find, and a great video. Nice work!

I cannot begin to express how much I love your content. Every time I sit back to watch a video, I'm completely immersed in the surroundings. Seeing what's left of these ancient buildings is an eye-opening experience, and you can really imagine what it was like back when they were new. The cinematic shots are fantastic, and really bring out the beauty in something, no matter how boring or neglected it may seem. I cannot wait to see more from you guys.

22:34 Actually that's a very specific type of design called 'Streamline Moderne'.

That's my home movietheater architecture when i win the lottery. 🤪😆

As beautiful as this video is, there is also a sad side. Think of all the people who build this place, worked there, and visited the theater in the 20's....none of them are with us anymore. It made me think about it a few times when i saw this video.

I live about 1 1/2 away from a smaller theatre built in 1939. River Oaks Theatre in Houston. I love this place. I was actually in a RHPS shadow cast that performed there when I was younger. Very Art Deco. It was a single screen, but in the ‘70s they converted the balcony into 2 small screens and kept most of the original in the large screen downstairs. Falling apart a little, but still beautiful molding and decorative pieces around the curtains. 14 years ago they were in danger of becoming a parking lot, but too many locals wouldn’t allow it. They’ve changed owners multiple times but stay afloat doing Art house, foreign, and midnight movies. They still RHPS.

I don't know why I struggle to sleep when I watch these so close to bed time!

20:21 Time for shadow puppets in a grand theater! lol

Not sure how long ago you guys went in there, but I looked the place up online and it looks like it’s back open and finished. New photos look amazing!!!

Absolutely amazing. To this day, after two years of watching you guys explore, thrive, and learn new methods of exploring, you both are still my favorite urbanex group. Thank you for all you share, explore, and respect with each location.

This gives me some Kino Der Toten vibes

U guys are awesome, way better than the crap tats on tv

Beautiful !! Thank you for sharing !

glad to see you guys are still going after so long. I still remember when i first watched the channel with the nuclear power plant video you made .. i still have an addiction to those exploration videos, even though there's few and far in between and after this long id still say you guys made the best of abandon ones anyway.

In the second theater the "projector" you found is actually call a "Magic Lantern"

Why’s no one talking about the fact this is kino Der toten from cod zombies

Absolutely stunning! Fantastic exploration; well done and brilliant filming!

Perfect timing🙏 Love your work and vids!!