many to suggest that the theater be moved to Broadway alongside the stage theaters. These desires were satisfied when Lamb built the Strand Theatre on Broadway, which was opened in 1914 by Mitchel H. Mark at the cost of one million dollars. This opening was the first example of a success in drawing the upper middle class to the movies and it spurred others to follow suit. As their name implies movie palaces were advertised to, "make the average citizen feel like royalty." To accomplish this these theaters were outfitted with a plethora amenities such as larger sitting areas, air conditioning, and even childcare services. Between 1914 and 1922 over 4,000 movie palaces were opened. Notable pioneers of movies palaces include the Chicago firm of Rapp and Rapp, which designed the Chicago, Uptown, and Oriental Theatres. S.L. "Roxy" Rothafel, originated the deluxe presentation of films with themed stage shows. Sid Grauman, built the first movie palace on the West Coast, Los Angeles' Million Dollar Theater, in 1918. Decline Following World War II movie ticket sales began to rapidly decline due to the widespread adoption of television and mass migration of the population from the cities, where all the movie palaces had been built, into the suburbs. The closing of most movie palaces occurred after United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. in 1948, which ordered all of the major film studios to sell their theaters. Most of the newly independent theaters could not continue to operate on the low admissions sales of the time without the financial support of the major studios and were forced to close. Many were able to stay in business by converting to operate as race or pornography theaters. The death knell for single-screen movie theaters (including movie palaces) arrived with the development of the multiplex in the 1980s and the megaplex in the 1990s. Technically, Stanley Durwood of AMC Theatres did not build the first multiple-screen movie theater, but he is now credited as more responsible than anyone else for leading the film exhibition industry into "splitsville". By 2004, only about a quarter of U.S. movie theaters still had only one screen, and the average number of screens per theater was 6.1. Design Eberson specialized in the subgenre of "atmospheric" theatres. His first, of the 500 in his career, was the 1923 Majestic in Houston, Texas. The atmospherics usually conveyed the impression of sitting in an