The Loew’s State Theatre opened at Broad and New Streets on December 12, 1921. It was designed by Thomas W. Lamb. It had about 2,600 seats and opened as a vaudeville and first-run movie house.
It was part of a 1921 Loew’s building run that included the State Theatre in Times Square, the 83rd Street Theatre in Manhattan, and the Gates Theatre in Brooklyn. Newark was not getting a side project. It was getting a downtown Loew’s palace.
For decades it stood on Broad Street, close to the center of Newark’s theater district. The nearby names read like a lost marquee roll call: Branford, Paramount, Proctor’s, Adams, Little Theatre. A few buildings survived in pieces. Loew’s State did not.
The theater closed in 1977 and was demolished in 1978. The current 635 Broad Street site is now a modern retail and office property, which makes the comparison a little brutal. There’s no hidden auditorium, no lobby reused as a shoe store, no balcony stuck above a drop ceiling.
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