{"id":250165,"date":"2026-07-23T10:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T10:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/250165\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T10:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T10:22:10","slug":"cobbs-creek-movie-theater-may-join-phillys-historic-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/250165\/","title":{"rendered":"Cobbs Creek movie theater may join Philly&#8217;s historic register"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                                                                                                                                                                                                        History of Philadelphia\u2019s Ambassador Theatre<\/p>\n<p>For nearly 40 years, the Ambassador operated out of an embellished brick building on the 5500 block of Baltimore Avenue. Built in 1921, the neighborhood theater offered working-class residents the opportunity to see new movies at a discount \u2014 if they were willing to wait until after a film\u2019s initial run.\n<\/p>\n<p>Weeknights drew the most patrons. They would enter through mirrored doors and pass through a marble-clad vestibule before taking their seats in a sloped oval auditorium with a \u201ccove-lit\u201d domed ceiling, according to the nomination.\n<\/p>\n<p>A screening could accommodate roughly 1,000 moviegoers.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Ambassador Theatre \u2026 represents important patterns of city life and West Philadelphia-specific social history,\u201d said Julia Hayman, a board member of the University City Historical Society, which nominated the theater.\n  <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-748097\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ambassador-theatre-2026-07-22-1.png\" alt=\"The run-down facade of the Ambassador Theatre on Baltimore Avenue.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"729\"  \/>Southwest Philadelphia\u2019s Ambassador Theatre, which was built in 1921, has been nominated to be added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. (Philadelphia Historical Commission)<\/p>\n<p>Like <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/philadelphia-historical-commission-frankford-the-circle-theatre\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">many of its contemporaries<\/a>, the exterior of the theater featured intricate terracotta ornamentation. According to the nomination, the clay material provided an \u201caffordable option to builders looking to produce a lavish appearance.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>In this case, it was used in concert with carved limestone to create details rooted in ancient Greece and Rome, a hallmark of the Classical Revival movement of the era. Most of these touches, including a trio of urns above the main entryway, are still visible today.\n<\/p>\n<p>Other parts of the building, likely including the theater\u2019s marquee and interior fabric, were lost when it was rehabbed by Kennedy Printing, which bought the property in 1981 at a sheriff\u2019s sale. But the investment kept the theater standing at a time when it had begun to fall apart.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout this intervention, the Ambassador Theatre would have possibly deteriorated beyond repair and been demolished before the turn of the century,\u201d according to the nomination.\n<\/p>\n<p>The print shop still owns the property today.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"History of Philadelphia\u2019s Ambassador Theatre For nearly 40 years, the Ambassador operated out of an embellished brick building&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11355,6451,69,71,9368,70],"class_list":["post-250165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-cobbs-creek","tag-historic-preservation","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-historical-commission","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}