Embassy Theatre

The father and son team of Hyman and Harold Cohen were the owner-operators of the National Theatre on the southwest corner of Monument Square. In the midst of the Roaring Twenties, they hired Albert D. Hill of Hodgens and Hill of Philadelphia to remodel their red brick building on a sandstone foundation as a movie palace. Hill designed a busy Colonial Revival facade with a lower level rusticated by stringcourses and white concrete pilasters separating tall pedimented windows. That is where tradition ends: the octagonal walnut ticket booth is carved with Egyptian motifs and the thousand-light marquee shouts the movie theater's new name, “Embassy,” in electric blue between bright orange sunbursts. The lobby is being restored to its former opulence, which included walnuttrimmed rose marble walls, a polychromed plaster dome with crystal chandeliers, and a black and green terrazzo floor. Inside the auditorium, rows of red velvet seats face the columned proscenium flanked by classical arcades under a cove-lit dome. A grand staircase leads to the mezzanine and balcony.