This Ballard street has delighted moviegoers for more than a century

This piece is from our latest This City Block series, which highlights stories from Ballard.

On a busy Ballard block on Northwest Market Street, on a site that now holds a handsome brick box of a building with a bright marquee out front, dreams have been flickering on a big screen for more than a hundred years.

During World War I people gathered here, to distract themselves during dark days by watching silent movie comedies, with maybe a little vaudeville in between. During the Depression they gathered, to see Hollywood stars glittering on the big screen. During the ’60s and ’70s they gathered, bringing the kids to see animated Disney hits.

And today, many decades and a pandemic later, they’re still gathering at the same address, to disappear into the magic of a flickering screen. It’s not the same theater now — the Majestic Bay, nostalgically named for its predecessors, opened in 2000 on the site where the tired Bay Theater was demolished a couple of years earlier. But it’s a locally owned place full of old-school charm (where else can you see a waterfall curtain?), and its owners, the Alhadeff family, pay tribute to the theater’s past in the lobby. There, three historic photos hang side-by-side, like a movie’s three-act story: the Majestic, the Roxy, the Bay.

Movie theaters come and go; we’ve all seen some of our favorite old moviehouses disappear or get repurposed (or, miraculously, come back). That Ballard block alone has several nearby ghosts of theaters past: The Bagdad Theatre, opened in 1927 and equipped with a Wurlitzer organ, was a moviehouse for three decades; its building now hosts a Starbucks and Secret Garden Books, among other tenants. The Empress presented movies and live performance on the corner of Northwest Market Street and Tallman Avenue Northwest, until the end of vaudeville closed the theater. The Crystal Theater, once part of the still-standing Junction Building on Ballard Avenue Northwest, showed silent films long ago.

But none had the longevity of what began as the Majestic. In 1915, “one of the prettiest theaters in the city” (according to the Seattle Daily News) opened at 2044 N.W. Market St. Built at a then-impressive cost of $17,000, it was a single-screen, 498-capacity moviehouse, with separate glassed-off rooms at the rear of the auditorium (one for patrons with noisy small children, one a “gentleman’s smoking lounge”). It had a Photoplayer pipe organ, which could be played manually or from paper rolls, and it smelled faintly not of popcorn (which wasn’t widely sold in moviehouses until the 1930s) but of sawdust, from a heater that thriftily used lumber waste from nearby mills.

Throughout the war years and beyond, the Majestic showed movies featuring silent-era stars like Charlie Chaplin (billed in newspaper ads as “Chas. Chaplin”), Mary Miles Minter, Mabel Normand and Mary Pickford. By the late 1920s, as talking pictures arrived, the theater was renovated and renamed The Roxy — then a popular moviehouse name. (Seattle had a Roxy Theater downtown at Seventh and Olive in the 1930s, later named the Music Hall, and Bremerton’s Roxy opened in 1941 and still shows movies today.) For two decades, Ballard’s Roxy featured Hollywood hits and occasional Swedish-language films popular with the neighborhood’s many Scandinavian immigrants. A 1937 Seattle Post-Intelligencer announcement for a screening of the Swedish film “Youth of Today” described it as “Romance rides the skylanes with Sweden’s young Lindberghs in this Paramount production filmed in the old country.”

After World War II, the theater was in need of another refresh, and the Seattle Daily Times reported in March 1949 that a “complete remodel” was underway, including a new “terra cotta front and new marquee,” and everything new inside: projection/sound equipment, seats, floors, drapes, carpets. “Seattle will be proud of this newest and most splendid addition to its thriving and enterprising community,” trumpeted a newspaper ad upon its reopening in May 1949, which also noted the theater’s new name: “We call it the BAY . . . you’ll call it your dream theater.”

The dream lasted quite a while: The Bay was a destination in the neighborhood for many decades, and was known for always booking the latest Disney movies. But single-screen independent moviehouses became rarities by the end of the 20^th century — nudged out by chain multiplexes, suburban sprawl and families being priced out of city neighborhoods — and the Bay fell into disrepair. The once-beautiful theater became a rundown $2 bargain house in the 1990s, and finally closed its doors in July 1997. At the time, it was reported to be the longest-running movie theater west of the Mississippi.

Enter the Alhadeffs, local philanthropists and former owners of the Longacres racetrack, looking to invest in a hands-on business. Ken Alhadeff, in an interview at the Majestic Bay last month, said that at the time he’d never been to the Bay and knew nothing about operating a theater, but he saw potential in that faded moviehouse where neighbors had gathered for so long. “I came out and I saw the place and I just went, wow.” He loved the idea of continuing the theater’s story, of keeping a Ballard tradition alive.

The original plan was to fix up the existing theater, but that quickly proved impractical. “The place was falling apart — there was no way to structurally make it safe enough,” Alhadeff remembered. Next plan: to start over and build a brand-new, three-screen theater, which made more economic sense for film booking than a single screen. The original Majestic/Roxy/Bay was demolished in 1998, with the new Majestic Bay opening in 2000. Though now nearly a quarter-century old, the building still has a brand-new sparkle, but carries a sense of history: Wood and bricks from the original theaters were used in the new one, and the old, glittery blue-and-yellow Bay marquees wink at passersby from the back and side of the building.

The interior, designed by Ken’s wife, Marleen Alhadeff, has an old-world elegance rare in a moviehouse these days, with a nautical theme that suits the Ballard neighborhood: portholes in the doors, jellyfish-like light fixtures in the lobby designed by Ballard artist Doug Hansen. “Remember the Titans,” with Denzel Washington, was the first film booked in the new theater’s main house; a poster for it remains on the lobby wall.

After nearly 25 years, the Majestic Bay remains a family affair: Ken’s son Aaron, president of the theater, still runs it, with the help of about 20 employees — many of whom are local teens getting first-job experience. The challenges facing independent moviehouses are many, particularly post-pandemic: The Majestic Bay no longer has early-afternoon weekday matinees — many of the older adults who made up the bulk of those customers have either left the neighborhood or lost the moviegoing habit in recent years — or late shows; typically its screens show two movies a day during the week, three on weekends. And for every “Barbie,” which set an all-time record for profitability at the theater last summer, there are many movies that just don’t find audiences.

But, as Aaron put it, “sometimes, when you follow your passion, things work out.” After more than 20 years, the theater’s still there — not exactly thriving, Aaron said, which is next-to-impossible for a small indie theater these days, but doing well enough. And what matters most isn’t necessarily the bottom line, but building community: through partnerships with Seattle International Film Festival and Ballard High School’s film department; through the generations of families who come to the theater; through being able to say yes when the family of a child with cancer asks for a private screening, or a would-be bride or groom wants the marquee for a proposal.

“Our family operates the Majestic Bay for its value to our community and to people,” said Ken. “In terms of what happens on that screen, we’re at the mercy of the studios. But our passion to deliver this environment is strong and worthwhile.” He said that though the theater’s bottom line may not always make sense from a business standpoint, “we’re privileged to be in a position to do that to the best of our ability, so this vision is always what it started out to be: to be this nation’s finest neighborhood movie theater.”

Other than the closure for rebuilding in the ’90s, and a closure for the pandemic a few years ago, it’s been nearly 110 years of movies on that bustling corner: more than a century of first dates and family outings and stories unspooling larger than life. Next time you’re at the Majestic Bay, take a moment to look at those three photographs on the wall — a reminder that some traditions are meant to last forever.

The Seattle Public Library and MOHAI contributed research assistance for this story.