The Fox Theater in Spokane, Washington is a 1931 Art Deco movie theater that now serves as a performing arts venue and home of the Spokane Symphony. It was designed by architect Robert C. Reamer, notable for his design of the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. It was part of the Fox Film Corporation Empire founded by studio mogul William Fox. The theater opened September 3, 1931 and showed films continuously until it closed September 21, 2000 after an engagement of the movie Gladiator starring Russell Crowe. History Planning and construction In 1927 rumors began circulating that William Fox's expanding Fox Film Corporation was to build an "million dollar movie palace" in downtown Spokane when an agent of the West Coast Company purchased 2/3 of the city block abutting Sprague Avenue and Monroe Street. The area was already home to a wide variety of theaters at the time but the area lacked a theater from a major motion picture house and distributor.The Spokesman-Review published initial depictions of the proposed atmospheric theater, which was designed in a "Hispano-Italian" architectural style by John Eberson. However, the project was delayed due to the financial difficulties of Fox Film Corporation following the 1929 stock market crash and the companies subsequent reorganization as Fox West Coast Studios and no construction had commenced other than cleaning and clearing the work site. The site of the theater was to be on the southeast corner of Sprague Avenue and Monroe Street where Louie Adams' old beer parlor had been located. When Fox took over the companies operations in 1928, he reiterated support for the motion picture project in Spokane in several press releases in 1928 and 1929, including renderings of a new design, but the site remained vacant. Behind the scenes however, Fox West Coast Theater Corporation had set aside funding worth $15 million dollars for new expansion projects and in late 1929 hired Robert Reamer as architect to work on the Spokane project and releasing another rendering of the theater in the Spokesman-Review on January 5, 1930. Reamer's previous theater work included the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle and the Mount Baker Theatre in Bellingham, Washington and the design in the newspaper resembled the latter. Reamer is also notable for his design of the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. The Spokane firm, Whitehouse & Price were brought on as associate architects and Los