CAPITOL,303 Broadway, 1732 seats.

The last theatre built in Somerville, the Capitol was also the city's largest and most luxurious. It opened in 1927, the same year as Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Lindbergh's flight to Paris, the arrival of sound, and the first Oscar Awards Ceremony. It also opened the same week as the new Ford plant in nearby Assembly Square. Located on Broadway across the street from Pearson's Perfect Pictures -- which it quickly put out of business -- the Capitol was an enormous theatre seating 1,732 people. With its own orchestra and art deco murals lining the entrance, the theatre was predicted "to be the centre of attraction at all times." Its beginnings were not auspicious, however. An Armenian immigrant named Vartigian had gone into heavy debt to build it, and only three years after it opened the Union Realty Company foreclosed on the mortgage. A nasty suit followed and by 1931 it was part of the Interstate Theatre circuit. Eventually, M&P took it over, consolidating the Somerville market even further. In 1963, the Capitol closed and after various proposals for reuse failed, was torn down to make way for a supermarket.