Wednesday’s grand re-opening of the 102-year-old Parkway Theatre, re-christened the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkway and now permanent home to the Maryland Film Festival, has quite the legacy to live up to.

“Parkway like London cinema palace,” promised an advance look at the North Avenue movie theater that ran in The Baltimore Sun on Sept. 26, 1915, nearly a month before its Oct. 23 opening. According to the article, the Parkway was patterned after “the West End Cinema Palace” in London and included “a number of novel features.” Among the most charming: “a tea room … with dainty tea tables, writing desks and maids in attendance” that “the managers hope to make … a sort of social centre in the heart of the residential district.”

Opening night, which included orchestral and vocal performances leading up to the feature presentation of Pauline Frederick in “Zaza,” went off without a hitch, according to the next day’s Sun. If anything, perhaps too many people showed up.

“So huge was the number that arrived in time to see the first performance” at 8 p.m., the paper reported, “the lobby, stairways and attractive tea room which occupies the mezzanine floor of the building fairly swarmed with persons” waiting to be admitted to the 10 p.m. show.

“It is an exceedingly prettily finished house,” the unnamed reporter wrote, “with all of the modern equipment that tends for safety and comfort.”

chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com