Cobra Lamps and Pharaohs: The Coos Bay Egyptian Theatre

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

Walk south along Anderson Avenue in Coos Bay and the marquee gives it away before the architecture does: the Coos Bay Egyptian Theatre is the last full-blown pharaonic movie house on the Oregon coast, a 1920s fantasy of papyrus columns and hooded cobras dropped into a working timber and fishing town. It is also the kind of building that collects stories, and staff and audiences here have been trading accounts of footsteps, shadows and a lingering janitor for years.

• Where: downtown Coos Bay, Oregon
• Built: 1922 by Charles Noble, converted into a theatre in 1925 at a cost of $200,000
• Designers: Lee Arden Thomas and Albert Mercier
• Style: Egyptian Revival, the Egyptian Theatre variant popular after the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb
• Listed on the National Register of Historic Places: May 24, 2010
• Status: a functioning venue for films, concerts, plays and community events

Charles Noble Turned a Garage Into a Pharaoh’s Palace

The Egyptian did not begin life as a theatre. Charles Noble, a descendant of one of the area’s first settlers, put the building up in 1922, and in 1925 he spent $200,000 converting the garage into a movie house. That is a startling sum for a small coastal town in the mid 1920s, and it shows in the detail work.

Noble hired Lee Arden Thomas and Albert Mercier to design the conversion. They gave him piers decorated with papyrus blossoms, wrought-iron ceiling lights shaped like hooded cobras, and stairways flanked by pharaoh statues standing eight feet tall. The main auditorium seated 770. The timing was no accident: the tomb of King Tut had been opened in 1922, and Egyptian Revival theatres were going up across the United States on the back of that discovery.

Cobra Lamps, Papyrus Piers, and the Mighty Wurlitzer

What makes the Egyptian unusual is not that it was built this way but that it stayed this way. The theatre still has all of its original vaudeville backdrops, the sort of thing almost every comparable house threw out decades ago. In 2000 it housed the only theatre organ still sitting in its original theatre anywhere in Oregon, a 4/18 Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ. By 2010, it was one of just four surviving Egyptian Revival style theatres in the country.

It has not been frozen in amber, though. The Egyptian opened with a single screen, and in 1976 the balcony was carved up to hold two more, pushing total seating to 1,000. That kind of retrofit is part of why the building survived the era when downtown movie palaces were being flattened for parking.

The Janitor Who Never Clocked Out

The best known ghost story attached to the Egyptian concerns a former janitor. In the version passed around locally, he still works the building after hours, and people who believe they have encountered him describe an attentive rather than hostile presence, as though he is either finishing a shift or looking for company. There is no documentation tying a named employee to the story, and it should be read as folklore rather than as record.

A second piece of local storytelling puts a fatal fire at the theatre in 1927. That claim deserves a flag. The documented history of the building, including the material behind its National Register listing, does not describe a deadly fire, and until a record surfaces it belongs firmly in the legend column. Haunted reputations tend to grow a tragedy to hang themselves on, and old theatres are especially prone to it.

What Staff and Audiences Report Inside the Egyptian

The accounts that circulate are modest and repetitive, which is usually a sign they come from people working in the building rather than from a marketing department. Reported experiences include:

• Unexplained noises in an otherwise empty auditorium
• Shadows crossing aisles, the lobby or the stairways
• Occasional sightings described as apparitions
• The janitor figure, the most frequently named presence in the stories

None of this has been verified, and a cavernous 1925 building with a converted balcony, an organ chamber and 100 years of settling timber produces a great deal of noise on its own. What can be said is that the reports are consistent and that they predate the theatre’s current life as an event venue.

Endangered, Then Listed: The Egyptian’s Long Fight

The Egyptian’s real drama has been financial. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 24, 2010, the same year it began inviting the community in to use the space for meetings, concerts, plays and other events. That recognition did not pay for the work the building needed. In 2011, with roughly $3 million in renovations unfunded, the theatre landed on the Historic Preservation League of Oregon’s list of the ten Most Endangered Places in Oregon.

That combination, a nationally significant interior and a repair bill the town cannot easily absorb, is the actual story of the Egyptian. The ghost stories are a footnote to it.

Seeing the Egyptian Theatre in Coos Bay

This is a live venue, not a ruin, and that is the best reason to go. Programming has ranged from film screenings to concerts, plays and community meetings since the theatre opened its doors to wider public use, so check the current schedule before making the drive to the coast. Buying a ticket to whatever is playing puts you inside the room with the cobra lights and the pharaohs, which is more than most Egyptian Revival houses in America can still offer.

There is no ghost tour attached to the building and no guarantee of anything unusual happening while you are in your seat. Treat the hauntings as part of the theatre’s local reputation, respect that staff are at work, and do not go looking for access to areas that are not open to the public.

See The Egyptian Theatre for Yourself

Sources

• Announcements and actions on properties for the National Register of Historic Places for June 4, 2010 (National Park Service)
• Silent pipes for Christmas concert
• History of The Egyptian Theatre
• Most Endangered Places 2011 – Egyptian Theater
• NPGallery Asset Detail (National Park Service)
• Wikipedia: Egyptian Theatre (Coos Bay, Oregon)

Address: 229 S Broadway

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