Crest Theatre

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The Crest Theatre is an historic theatre located in downtown Sacramento, California.

It originally opened in 1912 as the Empress Theatre, and at that time was used as a vaudeville palace. It later became the Hippodrome. In the late 1940s, the marquee fell to the ground, killing a bystander.

Shortly after the tragedy, in 1949, the building was completely remodeled and revamped to its current form as the Crest Theatre. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was one of the premier first-run movie palaces in the Sacramento area. As the decade turned to the 1970s, it was reduced to mostly sub-run fare. In the early 1980s, the Crest closed down for a time while several attempts were made to revive the theatre in many forms, including a dinner theatre. Finally, by the end of 1995, the Crest was completely refurbished and today its main auditorium (which has been left in its post-1946 unaltered state) is a multi-purpose theatre showing classic revival and specialty films, occasional live shows and lectures. Two additional cinemas were built adjacent to the original site around the time of the remodeling.

The theatre was the location of a 2004 presidential debate between former Green Party presidential nomination candidate and current independent vice-presidential candidate Peter Camejo, and Normon Solomon on January 29, 2004, regarding the direction the Green Party should take in 2004.