The Landmark Theatre: the movie palace Syracuse refused to lose

Walk into the Landmark Theatre on South Salina Street and you can still feel the old movie-palace scale. It opened on February 18, 1928, as Loew’s State Theater, built by MGM founder Marcus Loew and designed by theater architect Thomas Lamb. The theater’s own history describes it as especially grand. Back then it was one of five movie palaces lining Salina Street, a stretch locals called “Little Broadway.”

By the 1970s, television and the move to the suburbs had emptied out theaters like this one all over the country, and the wrecking ball was a real threat. Here’s the part Syracuse is proud of: neighbors refused to let it go. A group called the Committee to Save Loew’s raised money that New York State then matched, which let a local nonprofit buy the building and rename it the Landmark Theatre in 1977.

The save stuck. A big expansion finished in 2010 modernized the backstage so the Landmark could host major touring Broadway productions, and crews have kept restoring the old plaster and paint in the theater’s original colors. Today it draws more than 150,000 guests a year.

The building is the memory handle here. Syracuse did not just keep an old theater facade; it kept a downtown room big enough for movies, Broadway tours, preservation work, and a little civic pride under one ceiling.