The METROPOLITAN THEATER, on Euclid Ave. at E. 49th St., opened 31 Mar. 1913 with a performance of Aida, the first production in an 8-week season of opera in English. The theater was the brainchild of Max Faetkenheuer, musical director and entrepreneur who often was referred to as "the Oscar Hammerstein of Cleveland." Faetkenheuer previously conducted the orchestra of the LYCEUM THEATER and presided over the openings of the EMPIRE (1901) and COLONIAL (1903) theaters. He also promoted the construction of the HIPPODROME in 1907.
The Metropolitan was designed by Cleveland architects Fulton & Taylor. The auditorium, approximately 75' x 100' with seating for nearly 2,000 attendees, was described in a contemporary account as "spacious yet cozy, modest yet elegant," and second only to the Hippodrome in beauty.
The Metropolitan offered grand opera, musical comedy, orchestral concerts, and legitimate theater, including stock and travelling performances of plays such as Pudd'nhead Wilson, Lohengrin, Candida, and Romeo & Juliet (the latter featuring stage legend Julia Marlowe). Within a few years of its opening, the theater also began showing films, including the 1916 premiere of The Perils of Society, a film made in Cleveland using many of the city’s most prominent citizens.
By the 1930s the Metropolitan's location—just west of E. 55th St.—was hampering its ability to attract higher-class audiences. In 1933, David Lederman, owner of several downtown burlesque houses, purchased the theater from Lowe’s Ohio Theaters, Inc. The next year, the renamed Gaity Theater opened its doors, debuting with, according to the Plain Dealer, “Boob Blake the Red Nosed Clown and a chorus of 24 coryphées [dancers].” For the next decade, the theater featured burlesque; showed movies; hosted benefits and dance lessons; and brought in various neo-vaudeville acts such as magicians, acrobats, musicians, and (for one night in 1940) Smiley Burnette, Gene Autry’s roly-poly sidekick.
In 1944, the theater took another turn by converting to “all-colored shows” with performers such as Count Basie, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, and Anna Mae Wilburne and her All-Girl Sepia Orchestra. Closed for several months in 1945, the already re-christened Metropolitan reopened with additional Sepia acts and an added lineup of boxing matches and foreign films.
Between 1950 and 1975 the theater was part of the radio station WHK Bldg. and served as its Studio I auditorium, broadcasting and periodically hosting large-audience programs such as Say it with Music. After standing vacant for several years, except for a sporadic movie screening, the venue was remodeled in 1985 and became the AGORA Theater.
Updated by Christopher Roy 28 November 2025