{"nrhp_refnum":"79003289","name":"Byrd Theatre","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"2908 W. Cary St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Richmond (Independent City)","county":"Richmond (city and county)","state":"VA","lat":37.552579997000066,"lon":-77.47770132499994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1979-09-24","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Entertainment/Recreation","Exploration/Settlement","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 1,396-seat movie palace at 2908 West Cary Street in Richmond, Virginia, built in 1928 and designed by Richmond architect and contractor Fred Bishop for Walter Coulter and Charles Somma.","why_significant":"The nomination presents it as an outstanding example of a 1920s movie palace, with an Italian Renaissance exterior and a Rococo-style auditorium. It is comparable to major movie palaces in New York and Atlanta, and has a national reputation for its Wurlitzer organ and its tradition of daily live organ music.","narrative":"Opened on Christmas Eve in 1928, this Richmond movie palace at 2908 West Cary Street was built for Walter Coulter and Charles Somma at a cost approaching one million dollars. Architect and contractor Fred Bishop gave the red brick and white terra cotta facade an Italian Renaissance character, with a black Italian marble box office. Inside, a vaulted gold-leaf lobby leads to a 1,396-seat auditorium in an opulent Rococo style, with marble, crystal, crimson velvet and a two-ton chandelier holding four thousand hand-cut crystals. Decoration was by Brounet Studios of New York. The theatre was built for sound films and equipped with Vitaphone. It became the showcase house for major Hollywood studios. Its Wurlitzer organ, with four manuals and seventeen ranks of pipes, has brought it national recognition, and live organ music has been played daily since opening. Few alterations have occurred over its first forty-nine years of continuous operation, chiefly the loss of the lobby fountain and a replaced marquee.","period_of_significance":"1928","architect_builder":"Fred Bishop","architectural_style":"Italian Renaissance exterior with Rococo-style auditorium interior","criteria":[],"status_note":"Still used as a theater; the only alterations noted are the removal of the original marquee (replaced in 1971) and the lobby fountain.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:57.684569-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/23/6829/41682923/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/79003289.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/79003289/ccc6d708b8-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/79003289/ccc6d708b8-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 3.0","author":"Morgan Riley","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Byrd_Theatre.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Morgan Riley</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Byrd_Theatre.JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"71000982","name":"James River and Kanawha Canal Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/virginia/james-river-and-kanawha-canal-historic-district-71000982/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41682923","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrd_Theatre","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5004235"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/richmond/byrd-theatre-79003289/"}