The Cabot Theatre

The Cabot Theatre is a North Shore treasure, a legacy of the visionary showmanship of the Ware Brothers.  Opened in 1920 as a dream palace of vaudeville and silent movies, it was hailed as “the most impressive auditorium of its size east of New York”.  This Ware Theater shared a distinguished architectural pedigree, designed by the architects of Boston’s Athenaeum and Olympia Theater and Dorchester’s Strand Theater.  For its first 40 years, it served as a center of community life for downtown Beverly.

No ordinary building, the Cabot is a rare survivor.  Only 250 similar movie palaces still exist out of an estimated 20,000 theaters built in the 1920s. But its future came into doubt when the Magic Company wound down and they placed the theater up for sale.

With an irreplaceable civic treasure at risk, a passionate group of Beverly citizens has formed a nonprofit organization, Cabot Performing Arts Center, Inc, to operate as “The Cabot”, a cultural center that will beat in the heart of 21st Century Beverly as the Ware Theatre did in the vaudeville era.

A new Cabot will provide a wide spectrum of arts experience for the community. If this vision is embraced and supported by the community, the second century of the Cabot’s life will present a richer and more varied variety of artistic work than the walls of the theater have ever seen before, entertaining and inspiring new generations of North Shore citizens.