The Egyptian Theatre: King Tut's Tomb Comes to Grove Street
Near Boise, Idaho
The Egyptian Theatre at seven hundred Grove Street opened in April of nineteen twenty-seven, and the local press described it as embodying the characteristic features of the land of the Nile, from the truncated pyramids which form the great pylons to the lotus bud pillars with their ornate frescoes. That was not an exaggeration.
The theatre is one of the surviving examples of Egyptian Revival architecture in the United States, and its existence has a specific historical cause. In nineteen twenty-two, British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. The discovery was the biggest news event of the decade, photographs circled the globe, and everything Egyptian became fashionable overnight. As many as one hundred Egyptian-style movie theatres were built across the United States in the years immediately following.
Boise entrepreneur Leo Falk commissioned architect Frederick Hummel to design one. Hummel based the great lotus pillars flanking the stage on the columns of the Temple of Karnak, three thousand years old and standing on the Nile at Luxor. The winged scarab above the proscenium arch is gilded. The walls carry painted hieroglyphic motifs.
The theatre opened with the film Don Juan on April nineteenth, nineteen twenty-seven, and has been in more or less continuous operation since. It seats around eight hundred thirty people. Over the decades it's hosted premiers, concerts, and community film screenings, and it survived the era when most ornate movie palaces were demolished or carved into multiplexes.
A restoration in nineteen ninety-nine preserved the interior intact. Today the Egyptian is one of the few remaining buildings from Boise's golden age of downtown entertainment, and one of the handful of surviving Egyptian Revival theatres anywhere in the country.
