Bing Crosby Theater Spokane
— the marquee Bing first sang under.
Not only on a wall.
“The theater opened in 1915 as the Clemmer, designed by Edwin W. Houghton on the second block of West Sprague Avenue in downtown Spokane. A teenage Bing Crosby sang in amateur talent contests on its stage in the early 1920s, in his Gonzaga years. The building has changed names four times since: the Audian in 1928, the Met in 1988, the Bing Crosby Theater in 2006, when Spokane gave one of its hometown sons the marquee. Today it seats about seven hundred and fifty for live music, comedy, films, and lectures. The lights still come on at dusk on Sprague, and the brick facade still holds the warmth of the day on a cold Inland Northwest night.
Bing Crosby Theater Spokane, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Bing Crosby Theater stands at 901 West Sprague Avenue in downtown Spokane, Washington, two blocks south of Riverfront Park and the Spokane River. The building opened on December 18, 1915 as the Clemmer Theater, designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton in the vaudeville and early-cinema idiom of its era. It became the Audian in 1928, was operated as a film and live venue through the mid-twentieth century, was restored and reopened as the Metropolitan Performing Arts Center in 1988, and was rededicated as the Bing Crosby Theater in 2006. The auditorium seats roughly seven hundred and fifty and remains in continuous use as a live venue, with music, comedy, dance, lectures, and films programmed through the year.
The Clemmer / Bing Crosby Theater is a 1915 Edwin W. Houghton design in red brick and ornamental terra cotta on a corner lot of West Sprague Avenue. The facade carries a classical pediment, a recessed entry under the marquee, and the patterned brickwork that the early-twentieth-century vaudeville and movie palaces shared from Seattle to St. Paul. Houghton, born in England and trained in San Francisco, was one of the most prolific theater architects of the Pacific Northwest, with the Moore Theatre in Seattle and the Wilma in Missoula among his other surviving rooms. The Bing's interior auditorium has been worked over more than once across a hundred and ten years; the masonry shell and the street facade are still the 1915 building.
The Bing Crosby Theater operates as an active live-performance venue, seating roughly seven hundred and fifty across a single rake of orchestra and balcony. Programming runs through the year and skews toward live music, with touring singer-songwriters, jazz, folk, blues, comedy nights, and the occasional film screening on the calendar alongside collaborations with the Spokane Symphony, Spokane Jazz Orchestra, and local presenters. The theater is in easy walking distance of the downtown Spokane hotels along Sprague, of Riverfront Park, and of the Davenport Hotel one block north. Parking is on-street and in adjacent downtown garages. Doors typically open an hour before curtain; the box office is on Sprague and tickets are also sold through the theater's website.