The Variety Palace That Became a Business Block

The brick building at the southeast corner of Washington and South Second streets, known as the Standard Theater, is being remodeled and will henceforth be a place where merchants will buy and sell ordinary goods. The idea of the Standard Theater losing its identity will recall a host of recollections to people who lived in this city when money was plenty and flowed like water. Without exaggeration, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in the Standard Theater when John Cort ruled it and women with picture hats and silken petticoats patronized it - champagne at $1 a bottle and pint bottles at the startling price of $5 each. Such sights as the old theater could tell of the many prominent people who have taken part in the gaieties is a sealed book the fast set know all about but do not care to mention except in a general way.

The history of the Standard Theater is connected in a great measure with the life of John Cort in this section. At one time he was the greatest variety showman in the Pacific Northwest and had a circuit including Butte, Spokane, Portland and this city. Cort was a comparatively young man when he came here and entered the variety business. He bought out a well-known pugilist and a wrestler named Connors. They had a show in a two-story frame building on South Second Street, between Washington and Main. It was in that house that the real interest in the Standard Theater and its peculiar life commenced. John Cort opened his theater in a two-story building on the site of the brick building that is now being remodeled.

In those days the corner of South Second and Washington streets was one of the best locations in the city, certainly one of the busiest. Opposite from the Standard, occupying the location where Clossen Kelly's drug store is now located, was Hamm & Schultz's coffee house. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that about half the town took dinner there every day. On South Second Street, between Washington and Yesler Avenue, was Jimmy Smith's Bijou Variety Theater, the one grand rival John Cort had.

As time advanced and the city, feeling the impetus of trade, grew more cosmopolitan every day, the theater business became correspondingly prosperous. One thing was certain: John Cort knew how to give a good variety show, and Jimmy Smith would not be left in the race. The competition between the two theaters was something fierce, and they used to have street parades every Monday. Each theater had a band, and if there was anyone in the city who did not know that there was a parade it was due to deafness. Cort was so progressive that he would bring out all the women he had employed in the house - performers and 'box rustlers' - in carriages and have them parade the streets. Sometimes they rode horseback, and it was not an extraordinary thing to have the women appear in low-necked dresses. The police finally had to stop Cort's parades of women.

Every night before the rival shows opened the respective bands would appear before the theaters and indulge in an open-air concert. Sometimes the bands played side by side in Pioneer Place. It was usually more of a contest as to which could make enough noise to drown out the other. What a business the Standard Theater did do, and Cort was coining money.

When the big fire of June 1889 swept the business portion of Seattle from the face of the earth the Standard Theater went too. Cort, however, was remarkably energetic, and in a short time had a tent up on Front Street, near Madison. The location, however, was not as good as the old one, so he secured a site on South Third Street, just below the old Clinton building, at the southeast corner of South Third and Washington streets. He put up a large tent with a wooden floor and boxes arranged along the side of the tent, and opened for business. This, it will be remembered, was just after the fire, and people were coming into the town at a prodigious rate. The streets were in bad condition and where the large brick buildings now stand there were tents. Business came to Cort fast, and he was busy every day and night.

It would be a hard matter to give any estimate of the money Cort made in the old tent, but it may be expressed by that old saying 'a barrel full.' While the golden stream was pouring into his lap on South Third Street he began rebuilding on the old site at the corner of Washington and South Second. There was nothing mean about Cort. If he wanted a brick building he got it. The theater was pushed to completion. Of course it was not an elegant playhouse. The object in view was different. The shows were an attraction, but wine and women stood in the foreground. The building has since been vacant, and now the old Standard Theater is to become a business block.