This was the second Pantages Theater in Seattle, built 1911 and opened in 1915. The theater stood at the corner of 3rd Avenue and University Street. It was sold along with his other holdings in 1929. The theater was demolished in 1965 or 1967 depending on which source is consulted. His long association with architect B. Marcus Priteca (1889-1971) began in 1911 and continued through the 1920s. Priteca designed and oversaw the construction of 22 theaters for Pantages, some located as far as Edmonton, Kansas City, and Memphis.
Pantages' arrest and trial in 1929 for allegedly raping a 17-year-old woman named Eunice Pringle found him guilty and then finally found not guilty in 1931. The legal battle deccimated a large portion of Pantages fortune.
This is a 40" tall terra cotta lion from Alexander Pantages (1876-1936) theater now in my private collection.
The lion had been removed with a number of others during demolition, in the 80's he wound up at the home of a Washington state couple who enjoyed him in their yard for the last 20 years. I acquired the lion from them recently along with the lovely 1949 photo of the theater above featuring billing for Alan Ladd and showing enough details the lions can be seen above.
Amazingly enough, the 1949 photo when scanned allowed me to enlarge it enough to determine the exact lion in the detail crop above is the one I have, this was due to the fact he has a hole in the roof of his mouth for marquee support rod - only 5 lions had this, 3 of them are visible in the 1949 photo. However, the lion I have has a chipped lower fang which is an old break, the 1949 photo clearly shows one of the 3 visible lions with the same missing tooth- the lion on the corner under the lighted "Pantages" sign.
Since the tooth is shown broken in the 1949 photo I believe it was damaged when the rod for the marquee was installed, the rods clearly had an eye bolt end inside the lion's mouth, and the eye bolt was hooked in with a shorter eyebolt that was bolted inside the wall. This arrangement allowed for movement and expansion. My guess is a worker installing the heavy steel rods accidentally bumped the end of it into the lion's tooth, breaking it off.
Photo of the back with some embedded brick and mortar- total 220 pounds;
And after removing what turned out to be 34 pounds worth of brick and mortar, the larger hole in the center was where the rod came through, while the smaller black hole just below that is a vent for the clay- pushed into the moist clay by the original maker to vet the thick clay forming the lion's lower jaw. Finger marks can also be seen in the cells- left by the man who pressed the clay into the plaster mold.
One last thing about the lion, I noted the back perimeter has tell-tale circular cutting grooves on it, that along with the thinness of the sculpture and the broken cell walls in the back shows that during removal or more likely shortly afterwards, someone used a power carbide type circular saw and cut around the perimeter and then chopped away what they felt was excess weight. Chances are the lion was considerly deeper, possible 6-8" in which case it would have been 350-400 pounds.
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