WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT

COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY & INDUSTRY

In 1979, the 59-year-old Winter Garden theater on the west side of Third Avenue mid-block between Pike and Pine streets was closed and remodeled for a Lerner's store. A downtown branch of Aaron Brothers, an art-supply chain, is the most recent proprietor.

	PAUL DORPAT

The Winter Garden opened early in December, taking its name from a famous New York City theater, the successor of which staged the 18-year Broadway run of "Cats."

The proprietor of Seattle's Winter Garden, James Q. Clemmer, was the city's first big purveyor of motion pictures. He got his start in 1907 with the Dream Theater where he mixed one-reelers with stage acts. Eventually, he either owned or managed many if not most of the big motion-picture theaters downtown.

Except for a few weeks in 1973 when the IRS closed it for nonpayment of payroll taxes, the Winter Garden stayed open at 1515 Third Ave. until 1979. In the end it was known simply as the Garden, a home for X-rated films where the house lights were never turned up. Here it is in 1932 showing a remake of a 1919 silent film, "The Miracle Man."

In the late 1950s, when television cut into theater attendance, many of the downtown theaters, the Garden included, played B-movies in double and triple features. In 1962, an 11-year-old Bill White would walk downtown from his home on Queen Anne Hill and spend the quarter his mother gave him for bus fair to watch movies in what he describes as "the dark comfort" of the Embassy, the Colonial and the Garden. White, whose mom thought he was at the YMCA, grew up to be an expert on films and a movie reviewer.