Majestic Theatre

The Majestic Theatre is a 600-capacity live music venue in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. Opened in 1906, it is Madison's oldest theater, changing ownership many times and adapting to the many changes in the entertainment business throughout its history. Beginning as a vaudeville theater, it became a movie house by 1912 with occasional live acts, and converted to talking motion pictures by 1930. Today the theater is owned and operated by Matt Gerding and Scott Leslie who acquired the theater in 2007 and made it into a successful music club hosting DJs and live shows several nights a week.

=== Vaudeville theater (1906–1912) === The Majestic Theatre was founded by Edward F. Biederstaedt (1865–1912) and his brother Otto, sons of Williamson Street grocer Charles Biederstaedt, whose German ancestors helped establish the Catholic church in Madison. Edward had been a railroad brakeman, secondhand goods dealer, and later ran the White House saloon on King Street. By 1900, he was running a gambling house in the basement of the Capital Hotel. Otto was a printer at the Democrat Printing Company. On May 6, 1906 the Biederstaedts purchased the King Street property from developers of the Cantwell block at Pinckney and Doty Streets, previously the site of annual outdoor tent shows featuring horses and touring vaudeville acts. Designed by Madison architects Claude & Starck, the Majestic has an irregular footprint due to it being in the center of a triangle-shaped block. It became the second vaudeville house in Madison when it opened on Saturday, December 15, 1906. Attendees were met with gray uniformed ushers and free music provided by Charles Nitschke Jr.'s Arion Orchestra.