English: As seen in January 2023, the former Franklin Theater stands at 609 Ridge Road in Lackawanna, New York. Though a great deal of the original detailing furnished by Buffalo-based architect Louis Greenstein has been lost to subsequent alterations, the fundaments of the Art Deco style remain visible on the façade - especially at the roofline, with a stepped parapet peaking at the center echoed by a similar series of stepped projections in the front exterior wall. Built for a cost of $125,000 by the contracting firm of Morad & Williams and operated jointly by the Dipson and Basil theater chains, the Franklin opened its doors on November 15, 1935 promising "first-run pictures selected from the product of all the major companies", screened courtesy of "the latest Western Electric wide-range system". Presented on opening day as a double feature were the George Raft/Alice Faye musical comedy Every Night at Eight, followed by Harry Lachman's lurid interpretation of Dante's Inferno starring Spencer Tracy. It was this lack of affiliation with any particular studio that proved the theater's undoing: though it did reasonably well through the remainder of the '30s and into the '40s, the Franklin soon begin to struggle in competition with the nearby Dipson Abbott and Shea's Lackawanna theaters, which both had exclusive distribution deals and were thus privy to the most in-demand features. Screenings at the Franklin became more and more infrequent, and more and more relegated to obscure and non-commercial titles (for instance, a 1958 advertisement announced a showing of the "vigorous and inspiring" Life of St. Ignatius, an English-language adaptation of José Díaz Morales' El capitán de Loyola produced by Fordham University professor Rev. Alfred Barrett and directed by the Rev. William Trivett), and it appears to have ceased functioning as a movie house sometime in the 1960s or perhaps very late '50s. By 1970, the building had been repurposed as a district office of the Erie County Department of Health, and government offices of varying descriptions (coexisting lately with retail space, as seen by the presence of the convenience store at left) have continued to find their homes at 609 Ridge since then.