Proctor’s Palace Theatre opened on Newark’s Market Street in 1915 as an elaborate entertainment complex with two auditoriums stacked one above the other. As downtown Newark declined and audiences changed, the theater increasingly showed blaxploitation, martial-arts and horror films before closing in 1968. Retail businesses continued to occupy portions of the building while the theaters above were sealed off and abandoned, preserving a remarkably intact remnant of Newark’s once-thriving entertainment district.

I had wanted to get inside Proctor’s for years. When I finally photographed it, the upper theaters had been sealed away above active storefronts for decades, with seats and architectural details still in place. It was exactly the kind of building that first drew me to ruins: a familiar city exterior concealing an almost untouched piece of another era.