The Redford Theatre: Detroit's Japanese Garden Under a Starlit Sky
Near Detroit, Michigan
A few blocks from here stands a theater that opened in nineteen twenty-eight and still operates today, run entirely by volunteers who believe it deserves to survive. Walk inside on a movie night and you will find something that almost no longer exists in America: an atmospheric theater with a Japanese theme.
The Redford Theatre was built for the Kunsky chain, the largest movie theater operators in Michigan, and opened on January twenty-seventh, nineteen twenty-eight. The Kunsky company wanted something more than a movie house, they wanted an experience. The architect designed an auditorium meant to suggest a Japanese outdoor garden at night. The proscenium is flanked by pagoda-style rooflines. The walls are decorated with Asian motifs, painted panels, and carved ornamentation. And the ceiling, the ceiling is what audiences remember. It is deep blue, and in it, tiny lights simulate stars, while a mechanical system causes soft clouds to drift slowly across the sky.
This was the atmospheric theater concept: you were not sitting in a building watching a movie, you were sitting in an open-air courtyard, under the heavens, somewhere magical. The idea was invented by architect John Eberson in the nineteen twenties and swept through the country briefly. Most atmospheric theaters have since been demolished or gutted. The Redford is one of the last surviving examples, and the only known surviving atmospheric theater with a Japanese motif anywhere.
The theater originally seated two thousand and fifty-one people and was equipped with a Barton theater organ, which was played live before and between screenings. In nineteen seventy-four, the Motor City chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society took over operations. They bought the building in nineteen seventy-seven. Since then, every usher, every projectionist, every ticket-taker has been a volunteer. The theater was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-five.
Today the Redford screens classic films, hosts stage shows, and still plays the Barton organ before screenings. On a good night, the clouds still drift overhead.
