[2] It is the official home of the Mobile Symphony Orchestra and also serves as the venue for movie festivals, concerts, lectures and special events.

Designed by renowned architect, Emile Weil, the Saenger featured the following: three-color auditorium lighting, a two-manual, ten-rank Robert Morton theater organ, full stage facilities to accommodate large road shows including stage and wardrobe traps, four floors of dressing rooms, musicians' and chorus rooms and 2,615 seats.

Poseidon is cast above the front entrance and the interior plaster ornamentation includes: Dionysus above the proscenium, Maenads encircling the chandelier in the lounge, Pan beneath the organ grilles and various stylized seahorses, shells and fish throughout the theater.

The theater's opera boxes that were located beneath the organ grilles were later removed to improve sight-lines when the larger Cinemascope movie screen was installed.

Other outstanding architectural features of the original building included: the tilted arcade, grand marble staircase, ornate lamps, chandeliers, statuary and door frames, a mezzanine and promenade.

There were lavish furnishings in the men's "Stage Room" and the ladies' "At the Sign of the Lipstick" lounge, which included draperies and carpets with the name of the theater woven into the fabric.

However—as was the case with many of these grand movie palaces—ownership changes, high maintenance costs and various other issues rendered many of these beautiful buildings nationwide, "white elephants".