The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester turned 100 years old on Tuesday, Aug. 18, marking a century since the Thomas Lamb-designed movie palace opened its doors to a sold-out crowd on Westchester Avenue, just steps from the Rye border.

For residents of Rye, Harrison and Rye Brook, the Cap has long been the neighborhood's live-music living room. No highway drive, no Manhattan train ride. Just a short trip down the road to a venue that Jerry Garcia once ranked alongside the Fillmore as one of only two theaters in the country "set up pretty groovy all around for music."

The theatre opened in 1926 with a 10-piece orchestra playing "The Star Spangled Banner" and a screening of the silent film "The Sea Wolf." According to the venue's own history, all 2,000 seats sold out and hundreds were turned away. An open letter in the local newspaper that week boasted the building contained "the only theater refrigerating system in Westchester County."

For decades it screened Hollywood classics. Patrons could pay as little as 5 cents for a double-feature Sunday matinee.

Then came rock and roll.

Under promoter Howard Stein in the late 1960s and early '70s, the Capitol earned its nickname: "The Original Rock Palace," as Westchester Magazine recounted in a centennial feature. The Grateful Dead played 18 shows between 1970 and 1971. On Aug. 8, 1970, Janis Joplin scrawled "Mercedes Benz" on a cocktail napkin at a nearby bar called Vahsen's and performed it live on the Capitol stage that same night.

The theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, but its concert days had faded. By the late 1990s, the main floor seats were gone and the building served as a catering hall for weddings and private events.

Concert promoter Peter Shapiro led a full restoration and reopened the venue on Sept. 4, 2012, with Bob Dylan on stage. The adjacent bar, Garcia's at The Cap, was christened by Trixie Garcia, Jerry Garcia's daughter, in 2013. More than 200 squirrels carved into the walls and architecture by Lamb remain the venue's unofficial mascot.

No one knows exactly why they're there.

Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead's bassist, went on to play more than 100 shows at the Cap, more than any other artist in its history. At the Phil Lesh Lane dedication ceremony on March 14, 2025, Shapiro recalled that around 2013, Lesh "decided he was going to get largely off the road" and chose the Capitol as his East Coast home base because "there was no nicer place."

The venue has now won Westchester Magazine's Best Music Venue award nine consecutive years, including 2026, according to the theatre. Garcia's took home Best Music Venue for Local Acts this year as well.

To mark the centennial, Pink Talking Fish headlined as "The Centennial Band," performing tributes to legendary artists who have played the Cap, joined by guests including Brendan Bayliss, Marc Brownstein, Karina Rykman, Robert Randolph and members of moe. and Goose. BERTHA: Grateful Drag, billed as the world's first all-drag Grateful Dead tribute band, also took the stage.

Coming up at the Cap: Pretty Lights launches its Soundship Space Bus Tour with a run Aug. 21–23. Collective Soul plays Friday, Aug. 28. Dark Star Orchestra's Cosmic New Year's Run is set for Dec. 31 into January 2027.