My family recently attended the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati’s production of “How to Train Your Dragon the Musical Jr.” at the historic Emery Theater.
It was my first chance to see the renovated Emery. Actually, to see the theater at all. There hadn’t been many performances in the Emery the past few decades, so this was my first visit inside the 114-year-old theater. And it was stunning.
The Emery Theater reopened in October 2025 after the Children’s Theatre’s six-year, $51.5 million transformation of the long-neglected auditorium. The old stage has its luster back, looking much like how the patrons in 1912 might have experienced it.
The Children’s Theatre show was terrific as well. A top-notch performance with absolutely amazing dragon puppets and Disney-level theatrical effects, such as digital projections on the walls for moving backgrounds.
They have embraced the Emery’s past as well. A Hall of History on the second floor includes a timeline of the building and the theater company.
‘Acoustically pure’ Emery Theater built for CSO
The history of Emery Theater starts in 1906 when the Ohio Mechanics Institute, a school for industrial arts founded in 1828, planned a new building on the site of Miles Greenwood’s Eagle Iron Works foundry, which supplied munitions during the Civil War.
Philanthropist Mary Emery, who saved the Cincinnati Zoo and built Mariemont, gave $500,000 ($17.4 million today) in 1908 to fund the new OMI building as a tribute to her late husband, Thomas J. Emery.
Among her conditions was including a state-of-the-art concert hall for the “Cincinnati music-loving public” that would be the new home stage for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
The English Tudor-style OMI building, designed by Samuel Hannaford & Sons, was completed in 1911 at Canal and Walnut streets at the border of Over-the-Rhine.
The theater design by Harvey Hannaford Jr. followed the isoacoustic curve theory developed for Adler & Sullivan’s Auditorium in Chicago. The Emery was considered “acoustically pure.” With two balconies and 2,211 seats, it was cozier than the enormous Music Hall.
The Emery Auditorium, as it was initially called, was nestled within the OMI building itself, with the main entrance on Walnut Street.
The Emery opened Jan. 6, 1912, presenting a Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concert under the direction of renowned maestro Leopold Stokowski, the CSO music director at the time. Audiences raved about the superb acoustics, which Stokowski compared to those of Carnegie Hall.
After just a few concerts at the Emery, Stokowski had a messy breakup with the CSO and left for the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The CSO outgrew the Emery in 1936 and returned to spacious Music Hall.
Famous names performed at the Emery Theater
A number of distinguished guests have graced the Emery over the years.
Jazz composer George Gershwin performed his famous “Rhapsody in Blue” as a soloist with the CSO on March 11 and 12, 1927.
“Never has jazz music had a better setting, nor one of its chief exponents a more cordial reception in high society,” The Enquirer reported. “George Gershwin was applauded until Emery Auditorium rang with the echo.”
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt made a speech at the Emery Auditorium on Nov. 14, 1938, opening the Wise Center Forum talk.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there on June 15, 1959, to a meeting in support of Theodore M. Berry as a candidate for City Council.
The Children’s Theatre, launched in 1919 as the Junior Players, was the resident theater company in the Emery from 1949 to 1969.
Also in 1969, OMI was folded into the University of Cincinnati as the College of Applied Science, and UC took ownership of the building. The school moved to the former Edgecliff College campus on Victory Parkway in 1989. The old OMI classrooms were converted into the Emery Apartments in 2001.
Under UC’s ownership, the Emery wasn’t used much. The Mighty Wurlitzer organ from the Albee theater was installed in the Emery in 1977, but with little occasion to be played, it was moved out in 1999 to its current home in the Music Hall ballroom.
The university finally sold the whole building in 2019 to a development partner for $8.55 million.
Now, the Children’s Theatre has returned, and with a little makeover magic, has the Emery sparkling again.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: MLK, Gershwin and CSO are part of the Emery Theater’s history
Reporting by Jeff Suess, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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