The Pabst Theater is an indoor performance and concert venue and landmark of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States.

[4] Built in 1895,[3] it is the fourth-oldest continuously operating theater in the United States,[5] and has presented such notables as pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, actor Laurence Olivier, and ballerina Anna Pavlova, as well as various current big-name musical acts.

The theater also boasts a staircase crafted from white Italian Carrara marble[citation needed] and a proscenium arch highlighted in gold leaf, which frames the stage.

[5] The Pabst was designed by architect Otto Strack in the tradition of European opera houses and the German Renaissance Revival style.

The venue was home to the German-language productions for many years, due to declining revenues began scheduling performances in English by 1918.

The theater is believed to be the first in Milwaukee to employ a counterweight system for hoisting scenery, which was installed after World War I and remains in use today.

[10] The Pabst Theater has the names of 15 notable artists inscribed about the cornice of the drum-shaped auditorium: Ibsen, Wagner, Molière, Aristotle, Michelangelo, Dante, Aeschylus, Thespis, Homer, Raphael, Shakespeare, Garrick, Beethoven, Goethe, and renovator Bernard O. Gruenke of Conrad Schmitt Studios.