Opened in 1907 as Seattle's oldest still-operating theater, this 1,800-seat downtown venue built atop the regraded Denny Hill is rumored to host former staff and a phantom audience.
1932 2nd Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Ticket prices vary by show; box office and Ticketmaster sales.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Urban sidewalk approach; multi-level historic theater with elevator access to most seating areas.
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1907 · National Register of Historic Places (1974) · Oldest still-operating theater in Seattle · Built by developer James A. Moore for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition · Original 'colored entrance' still visible; tangible documentation of Seattle segregation
The Moore Theatre was constructed in 1907 by James Alexander Moore (1861-1929), a Nova Scotia-born real-estate developer who arrived in Seattle in the late 1880s and platted many of the city's neighborhoods, including Capitol Hill. Moore commissioned English-born architect E.W. Houghton to design both the theater and an attached hotel; the complex opened December 28, 1907, with a production of the comic opera 'The Alaskan' staged for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition's preview season. With 2,436 seats at opening, it was Seattle's largest theater.
The building sits within blocks of Denny Hill, the steep ridge that originally stood north of downtown until the Denny Regrade projects (1898-1930) leveled it. Seattle's earliest recorded cemetery — used from roughly 1853 to 1860 — occupied land near 2nd Avenue and Stewart Street, only steps from the Moore's footprint. Per HistoryLink and Seattle Refined, the bodies interred there were officially exhumed and reinterred at Lake View Cemetery beginning in 1860; the cemetery had been closed by Ordinance and the regrade pushed the original surface roughly 100 feet lower than the Moore's present site.
Moore's career as a developer was meteoric — he built the adjoining Washington Hotel (formerly the Denny Hotel), platted neighborhoods from Madison Park to Rainier Beach, and constructed his own mansion on 14th Avenue East on Capitol Hill. He suffered a financial reversal in the 1910s and eventually relocated to California, where he died of heart failure at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on May 21, 1929, at age 67.
The theater itself, however, kept operating. The Moore weathered the decline of vaudeville, the rise and fall of movie palaces, and in 1974 was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Like many historic American theaters of the era, it included a separate side entrance for Black patrons — a 'colored entrance' still visible today and acknowledged on STG's own historical signage as a documented record of segregation.
The non-profit Seattle Theatre Group (STG) acquired the Moore in 1986 and the nearby Paramount in 1994, and operates both as live-performance venues; the Moore programs music, comedy, dance, and touring acts in its current 1,800-seat configuration.
Sources
The Moore's haunted reputation rests on two intertwined threads. The first is geographic: Seattle's first pioneer cemetery, sometimes loosely called the 'Denny Hotel Cemetery,' once stood near 2nd Avenue and Stewart Street — within a block of the Moore's footprint — before the bodies were exhumed and reburied in 1860, per HistoryLink documentation. Local press, including Seattle Refined, describes the theater as standing 'on the grounds of Seattle's first cemetery,' a claim grounded in geography but complicated by the documented relocation.
The second thread is anecdotal. Theater manager Steve Martin has told Seattle Refined that he has repeatedly heard footsteps on the stage during daylight hours when alone in the building, but never seen anything; a performer once told him during a soundcheck that she sensed a spirit in 'Row C6.' Local ghost-tour operator Seattle Terrors expands the lore to include a 'Lady in Red' figure said to wander the upper balcony and a backstage presence sometimes called 'Stagehand Sam,' though these names appear primarily in tour-operator material rather than archival sources.
Some accounts also place developer James A. Moore himself among the theater's spirits. This is documented only in ghost-tour publications; Moore is buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California, having died in San Francisco in 1929 — a fact that doesn't preclude folklore but is worth noting for visitors.
Reported phenomena consistently mentioned across sources include unexplained footsteps on the stage, the scent of cigar smoke in empty corridors, cold spots in the upper balcony, and a sense of being watched during off-hours. The Moore has not been the subject of a major paranormal-television investigation but recurs in Seattle Halloween features and walking-tour itineraries.
Notable Entities
Visit a ticketed performance to experience the 1907 auditorium; Seattle Theatre Group occasionally hosts public history programming including the annual 'STG Archive' open-house events.
The terracotta-clad Houghton facade and original signage are visible from the public sidewalk on 2nd Avenue between Stewart and Virginia.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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