History

Providence in 1928 occupied a curious position among American cities: the capital of the nation’s smallest and one of its oldest states, it punched far above its weight in terms of cultural and intellectual ambition. Brown University had been educating the American elite since 1764. The Rhode Island School of Design, founded in 1877, was already the nation’s leading art and design college. The textile mills of the Blackstone Valley had made Providence one of the wealthiest cities per capita in the country during the industrial age, and the downtown Weybosset Street area concentrated that wealth in a succession of theaters, shops, and civic institutions.

The Loew’s State Theatre arrived in 1928 as the culmination of Providence’s entertainment district: a movie palace designed to the standards the Loew’s chain had established in New York and other major cities, with an ornate Art Deco interior that made the act of going to the cinema an event rather than merely a pastime. Its 3,000-seat auditorium was the largest and most elaborate in the state.

The transition from cinema to live performance followed the familiar trajectory of the great American movie palaces: declining attendance, the rise of suburban multiplexes, and eventual closure. But Providence’s Loew’s State was saved rather than demolished. The nonprofit Providence Performing Arts Center took over management in 1977, restored the building, and repositioned it as the region’s primary venue for Broadway touring productions and major concerts. The PPAC has since been consistently rated among the finest regional performing arts centers in the country — a transformation that preserved not only a great building but a great institution.