In 1919, the Governor of Maryland and the Mayor of Baltimore appointed a War Memorial Commission that initiated a nationwide architectural competition to design a memorial building dedicated to the 1,752 Marylanders who died in military service during WWI. The design for the monumental building that today faces Baltimore City Hall across War Memorial Plaza was executed by local architect Lawrence Hall Fowler.

A ground-breaking ceremony on November 22, 1921, was attended by Ferdinand Foch, Marshall of France and the cornerstone was laid on April 29, 1923 in a ceremony attended by Acting Secretary of War Colonel Dwight F. Davis, Governor Albert C. Ritchie, and Mayor William F. Broening. The War Memorial was dedicated on April 5, 1925.

The finished building featured a 1000-seat auditorium and a mural by Baltimore artist R. McGill Mackall, depicting, 'A Sacrifice to Patriotism.' In front of the building are two stone sea horses representing the "Might of America crossing the seas to aid our allies." The sculptor, Edmond R. Amateis, included in the statues the coats of arms for Maryland and the City of Baltimore.

The building was rededicated by Mayor William Donald Schaefer on November 6, 1977 as a memorial to the Marylanders who gave their lives in all wars with American involvement during the twentieth century. The War Memorial Building still houses administrative offices for local veterans organizations.

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The $400,000 building (a transformation of an earlier auto dealership) was not just a theatre but included a whole complex with the WFBR radio station and studios, a branch bank office for the Equitable Trust Company, and a garage. Owner Morris A. Mechanic was born in Poland on December 21, 1904 and emigrated to Baltimore with his parents as a child. In 1929, Mechanic worked as the principal at a Hebrew School on West North Avenue and owned a chocolate shop downtown, when he decided to purchase the New Theatre as a real estate investment. The New Theatre's "box-office bonanza" success during a showing of "Sunny Side Up" encouraged him to stick with the theatre business for the rest of his life, owning dozens of theaters over the years before his death of a heart attack in July 1966.

The interior of the Centre Theatre featured a mural symbolizing entertainment and captioned, "Man works by day; night is for romance." by R. McGill Mackall, a MICA-trained Baltimore native who painted 53 large public murals in the city over his career. The design by Philadelphia architect Armand Carroll, described by the Sun as "conservatively modern" with decoration "intended to soothe rather than startle the spectator," won an award for "architectural attainment" from the Baltimore Association of Commerce as the best "Retail Commercial Building" built in 1939. When the theatre opened, Mechanic had an office on the second floor with a window "fitted with special glass... invisible from the theatre, the window permits anyone in the office to see the picture on the screen."

Morris Mechanic closed the theatre, later known as the Film Centre Theatre, on April 16, 1959, after the Equitable Trust Company announced plans to enlarge the complex and move their operations department into the building early in 1960. The bank planned to add a third story and "special dust-free areas... to create the exact atmospheric conditions required for the most efficient use of highly sensitive automated electronic equipment." One example offered for this new equipment included a $55,000 sorting machine that sorted checks and other documents at a rate of 1,000 a minute guided by "magnetic ink" rather than "the familiar punch card holes." The radio station and the bank remained through the 1990s before the theater was turned into a church. Unfortunately, without the resources for essential maintenance the building deteriorated significantly and was mostly abandoned for a decade.

In 2011, Jubilee Baltimore acquired the building at auction for $93,000 and started working to redevelop the sadly neglected site. In partnership with Johns Hopkins University and Maryland Institution College of Art (MICA), along with support from the American Communities Trust and TRF, Jubilee Baltimore restored the exterior back to its original appearance, lit up the marquee, and transformed the interior into offices and community space for film screenings, music, classrooms, galleries, and more. The Centre Theater reopened to the public in 2015.

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