Mainstreet Theater, Historic movie theater in downtown Kansas City, United States
Mainstreet Theater is a movie theater and live performance venue in downtown Kansas City, built in a French Baroque and neoclassical style with ornate detailing on its walls and ceilings. The lobby is centered around a large dome ringed by circular windows, giving the interior a grand, formal feel from the moment you walk in.
The theater opened on October 30, 1921, and in its early decades welcomed vaudeville shows alongside silent films for large audiences. Over the following century, it transitioned to a dedicated movie theater and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Mainstreet Theater earned the nickname "The House of a Thousand Candles" from the way its interior lighting once filled the space with small, flickering points of light. That name has stayed in local memory long after the original lighting was replaced.
The theater sits in downtown Kansas City and is easy to reach on foot or by public transit from most central points. Arriving a few minutes early gives you time to look around the interior before the lights go down.
An underground passage once ran between the theater and a neighboring hotel, allowing performers and animals to move between the two buildings without stepping outside. The tunnel is no longer accessible, but it points to just how large and complex the backstage operations of early vaudeville productions could be.
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