History

The Capitol Theatre opened in 1928, a year before the United States Automobile Club and two years before the Sit-Down Strike that would reshape American labor relations. In 1928 Flint was still at the apex of its automotive prosperity: General Motors Corporation, headquartered in Detroit but with its largest production operations in Flint, drove wages and consumer spending that supported a thriving downtown commercial district along Saginaw Street. The Capitol Theatre was the most ambitious entertainment venue in this district, seating nearly 1,700 patrons in an auditorium decorated with French Renaissance-inspired plasterwork, gilded coffered ceilings, and plush furnishings.

The theater operated through the 1930s depression and the wartime boom, but the post-war suburbanization and subsequent industrial contraction that struck Flint harder than almost any American city eventually eroded the downtown’s commercial base. The Capitol Theatre closed in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In the early twenty-first century, as Flint’s story became internationally known through the water crisis and ongoing urban recovery efforts, the Capitol Theatre became a focus for reinvestment. Restoration funding from community foundations, state historic preservation programs, and private donors has been assembled to return the theater to active use.

Flint’s automotive history is embedded in its urban fabric: the site of the 1936–37 Sit-Down Strike at the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 is a National Historic Landmark, and the Flint Cultural Center campus on Kearsley Street includes the Flint Institute of Arts and the Sloan Museum of Discovery.