The Morris A. Mechanic Theatre, located in Charles Center at Charles and Baltimore Streets on the site of the old Sun Building, was the first legitimate theatre privately built in the United States in over thirty years. The theatre was a project of the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency. Morris A. Mechanic owned and operated a number of theatres in downtown Baltimore, including the Ford's Theatre, which he acquired in 1929.

After more than thirty years of hosting legitimate theatre in the venerable but antiquated Ford's, Mechanic began planning for a modern theatre in Charles Center, the crown jewel of Baltimore's renaissance. The architect, John M. Johansen, designed the building in a style he called "functional expressionism." The textured concrete exterior of the theatre was created by pouring concrete into wooden forms, which left the imprint of random-width wooden boards. Faux wooden finish was also used on the interior walls to contrast with wall sections covered with burnt-orange vinyl. The theatre's 1,700 seats were arranged in modified amphitheater form with balconies located behind the orchestra seats. The proscenium stage was fitted with a portable apron allowing the hall to convert to a semi-theatre-in-the-round. Mechanic died while the building was still under construction.

Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin and Eugene M. Feinblatt, chairman of the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency, presided over the opening of the new theatre on Monday morning, January 16, 1967. Mrs. Morris A. Mechanic, widow of the theatre's founder, and Baltimore actress Elaine Swann were present to help with the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The doors of the hall opened that evening with a production of Hello Dolly benefiting the Morris A. Mechanic Foundation for the Children's Rehabilitation Institute.

The Morris Mechanic theatre brought Broadway's brightest lights to Baltimore. Tony Randall, Katherine Hepburn, George C. Scott, Cab Calloway, Deborah Kerr, Liv Ullman, Nigel Hawthorne and a host of others performed on the Mechanic stage, and Baltimore shed its reputation as a "lousy theatre town." Within its first decade the Mechanic could boast of having the second highest subscription rate in the country, and Baltimoreans could boast of having the first city center renewal project in the country with legitimate theatre as its centerpiece.

The Morris Mechanic Theatre went dark when the newly-renovated Hippodrome re-opened in 2004.

Note: Much of the information for this entry comes from original source material, including newspaper and microfilm, from the archives of The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, the Maryland Historical Society, and the vertical files at the Enoch Pratt Free Library.