The Dream Theatre was built by James Q. Clemmer, who became the manager of his father’s Kenneth Hotel in the Pioneer Square district of downtown Seattle in 1908. For $6000, Clemmer remodeled space in the hotel’s ground floor, formerly a bank lobby, to establish his first motion picture theatre, the Dream Theatre. Clemmer is thought by some to be the first exhibitor to install a pipe organ in a U.S. theater specifically to accompany motion pictures. The Estey pipe organ was installed in the Dream in 1908. The original Dream organist was Oliver G. Wallace, who went on to be the premiere organist at Clemmer’s Clemmer Theatre in 1912.
References: FilmYearBook-1926 p. 590 : Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society website.
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