The Venetian theater is a downtown Albany landmark that I pass almost every day without paying it any attention. Then, last week, I looked up its history.
The theater opened as a vaudeville house in the fall of 1913. It was owned by Conrad Meyer of Albany and leased by the Bligh Amusement Company of Salem, where T.G. Bligh also had a theater.
The following year, 1914, the manager of the Globe Theater in Salem bought the Bligh operation, and “The Globe” became the name of the Albany theater as well…