The mystery of the third organ at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, it was located in the screening in the basement below the main auditorium. It had been gone for years even before the Arthur Theatre chain closed the Fox. The Lobby organ was a Moller that was sold to a church somewhere in Southern Ilinois. It was replaced with a Wurlitzer and is played before all Broadway Performances. So the Fox in St. Louis has to Wurlitzer’s.
An update on the three organs of the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, Naturally there was and still is the Mighty Wurlitzer in the main auditorium, the second Fox organ was Moller lobby organ that is gone from the Fox and now in a church somewhere in Southern Illinois. The moller was replaced with a wurlitzer for the lobby and is located in the lobby third level south side. It is only played before all Broadway Perfornaces. The third organ at the Fox was located in the basement level screening room. It has been gone for years and when the Fox was restored the screening room was done away with. So as it stands today the Fox has two Wurlitzers.
Bil could you have this reversed on the names of the theatre, according to the history that I have the theatre opened in 1929 as the NuBell Theatre, It had a full stage with fly gallery and an orchestra pit, dressing rooms for vaudeville which at the time was presented along with motion pictures. It was later renamed the Bellflower. Ownership changed several times during its venue as a movie theatre and ws closed in 1977 due to compitition from the Multiplexes. New seating was installed in 1960 on both the main floor and balcony. A new fire wall was installed to close the proscenium opening and a new wide screen was installed along with waterfall curtains.
The Calvary Church purchased the theatre in 1986. They cleaned the theatre up inside and out. They installed a new brick veneer on the exterior walls and changed the lettering on the vertical to HOSANA from HOLIDAY. The address at the time listed it as 16705 Bellflower Rd. but they way numbers change on streets in Ca. it could very well be 16711 now.
The legends of the Fabulous Fox are many and varied. One of the greatest is how Mary and Leon Strauss saved the Fox from the fate of many other movie palaces. Im 1980 the Fox was in a state of disprepair, the roof leaked causing considerable damage to ornate plaster works, wall grates were kicked in, most of the plaster was no longer on the walls and the ceilings but laying in the floors.The ornate woodword had cracked and chipped. The once elegant carpeting was worn thin from usage and was torn and frayed. The utilities had been turned off because of the expense. The once brilliant lite chandelier was ill lite and missing many of its lights. Leon Strauss saw the Fox as a potential redevelopment project. Leon and his wife Mary felt a duty to save this rare jewel. Mary Strauss was appointed as director of the project. Her first decision was to either restore or rehabilitate the Fox. Since she liked the designs of the Fox she felt any changes would destroy the theatre’s greatness as a movie palace. That’s when she decided to restore the palace to its past grandeur.
She had the curtain that had been lying on the stage , the wood was tested and plaster surfaces to decide how they would be cleaned. Som plaster surfaces could not be duplicated because the design was destroyed. Mary got in touch with the management of the Fox’s twin in detroit and obtained photos and plasters in St. Louis recreated the missing plaster panels.
A group was formed known as the Fox Associates and spared no expense in restoring the Fox. Specialits were found that could do the scagliola on the pillars flanking the lobby and the auditorium. When completed the scagliola resembled a rare maroon marble, it ws costly due to the time it took to complete the task.
Carpeting was replaced and Mary decided to go with the original pattern which had to be speciallly woven. The grand lobby is not carpeted and retains the original terazzo floor. Almost 7,300 yards of ornate maroon colored carpet with elephant heads and designs carpet the ausitorium and balcony floors. The seats were removed and reupholstered with maroon velvet.
During a remodel in 1959 Arthur Theatres reduced the number of seats to 4,503. The orchestra section has 34 rows divided into six sections which run from left to right. The third and fourth section stand in the center of the theatre. For an idean of size the orchestra section extends 133 feet fro the stage. The length from the stage to the last row in the balcony extends 160 feet which is the width of a football field.
At last the Fox has been restored to original granduer and is the talk of the city. The Fox is being used for concerts and broadway shows. The Strausses helped the Fox return to Fabulous for this temple of art and entertainment. The half century old theatre is still alive and thriving today.
I have posted an update under the Fox Theatre in St. Louis since this posting is for the Galazy. I have contacted Ed at the Fox in St. Louis for further informatin on the three organs mentined at the Fox and he will get back to me with the information. I will post it on the Fox listing.
On my down time as a commercial pilot based out of St. Louis I did relief managing for the Arthur Theatre chain and had to report to the offices located on the second level of the lobby on the south side of the mezzanine. There was a mention of three organs in the Fox Theatre to which in all the years I was associated with the Arthur Chain I have knowlege of only one. I tried to contact Ed at the Fox for confirmation and as to where the second and third ones were lcoated. He is off today but left a message for him to contact me. I will post the information when he gets back to me. The Main auditorium organ which was almost sold to a pizza parlor in Arizona was only one of five in the country. This mighty Wirlitzer was designed to Jesse Crawford’s specifications so it is known as the Jesse Crawford model. One of the largest ever built, this massive conglomeratin of nearly 4,000 pipes, 360 stops adn a 50 horsepower electric motor is now the only one left that has a quality sound and rises from the floor in a blaze of light. Stan Kahn still performs on the Mighty Wurlitzer at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis.
Would like to know if this theatre was also known as the Palace Theatre at 66 Washington St. or was the Palace a seperate theatre all together and what was the distance between the two if they were seperate.
A very complete and colorful History of the Tivoli Theatre complied by the Horning Brothers:
The Tivoli Theater was designed by prominent New York architect Thomas W. Lamb. It reflects Italian Renaissance Revival style architecture with its stucco exterior, red tile roof, ornate cornices, and numerous graceful arches. Completed in 1924 at a cost of $1 million, the theater was, until its closing in 1976, one of the most elegant movie houses in Washington, D.C. In addition to the main theater auditorium, the building contained offices on the upper floors and several two-story shops along the 14th Street and Park Road frontages. In the quarter century it has lain vacant, the building has suffered from neglect, extensive vandalism, and severe water damage due to a leaking roof. This early conceptual rendering of the theater was obtained from the New York City Public Library.
The history of the Knickerbocker Theater, designed by Reginald Geare, and built during the First World War, is closely associated with that of the Tivoli. The owner of the Knickerbocker, theater magnate Harry M. Crandall, operated a chain of movie theaters in Washington. Geare was his primary Washington architect and, in addition to the Knickerbocker, had designed the Metropolitan in 1917 and the Lincoln in 1921. The Knickerbocker was located on the southwest corner of 18th Street and Columbia Road in Adams-Morgan, the present location of the SunTrust Bank.
In a brief 24-hour period spanning January 27-28 1922, a massive storm dropped 26 inches of snow on the city, causing the fragile roof of the Knickerbocker to collapse.
Few of the patrons who had filled the theater that evening for a screening of the comedy hit “Get Rich Quick Wallingford” escaped unharmed. In the heaped rubble of the auditorium, 98 people were found dead and 136 injured. Following the collapse of the Knickerbocker, Crandall released Geare as his primary architect, even though Geare had already begun work on a new theater in the fashionable neighborhood of Columbia Heights.
In his place, Crandall appointed the reputable young Thomas Lamb from New York as architect for all of his subsequent designs, including the Ambassador, built from the remains of the Knickerbocker, and the Tivoli. Lamb began designing the Tivoli less than six months after the Knickerbocker collapse. Incorporating a new understanding of structural integrity which followed in the wake of the disaster, Lamb designed the Tivoli as three separate bodies-stage, auditorium, and perimeter.
The earliest architectural drawings of the Tivoli are labeled Scheme A and date to June 15, 1922- at which point the theater did not have a name but was simply referred to as “Theater Building.” Lamb’s original proposal features ornate, decorative detail throughout the exterior. There is far more stucco detail surrounding the numerous windows on the second floor of this original conceptual design.
The canopy and marquee from these Scheme A drawings also differ from what was eventually built. The artistic streetscape rendering at the beginning of this series of pages reflects this grand original concept. (These original architectural drawings were found in the archives of the Avery Library of Columbia University, New York City.)
Ornate Scheme A drawings were still being produced as late as December 11, 1922. However, by April 12, 1923, the date of the final architectural drawings, the theater building had been given the name Tivoli and the drawings had become simpler and streamlined, nevertheless still fully reflective of the Italian Renaissance style. The change in design was most likely due to constraints imposed by owner Harry M. Crandall, whose initial building cost estimate was $650,000.
On Monday December 4, 1923 construction commenced on the Tivoli, which became the ninth in the chain of Washington theaters owned by Crandall. Although the final building was less ornate than the original conceptual drawings, it still cost over $1 million when it was completed in 1924.
The cross-section of the exterior reveals the wooden brackets and tin soffits under the eaves of the tile roof, masterful detail easily overlooked given the current condition of the building. Thomas Lamb designed a number of other large, luxurious theaters throughout the country, including the Orpheum in Boston, the Strand in New York, the State in St. Louis, the Fox in San Francisco, and the Trans-Lux in Washington, D.C.
Although Lamb was firmly rooted in the Beaux Arts style during the 1920’s, in the next decade he began to incorporate the new architectural currents of Art Deco into his theater design. Gracing the corner of 14th Street and New York Avenue, the sleek Trans-Lux Theater, built in 1936 and torn down in 1975, was one of Washington’s most beautiful Art Deco buildings. The newsletter of the Art Deco Society of Washington described the Trans-Lux Theater as “sweeping down the block like an ocean liner, with a prismatic mirror tower on one end and an RCA radio transmitter with thunderbolt script on the other.” Its illuminated glass tower was one of the largest in the world.
I was able to get a seating chart from the Orpheum on a visit there last week. It reads as follows.
Main Level 1264
5 Wheelchair Locations
10 Wheelchair Campanion Seat
Mezzanine 242
Balcony 400
Grand Tier 93
Upper Gallery 99
Lower Gallery 220
2328 Total Seating Capacity as of 2/14/04
Roger why are you being such a stickler on the address. When you look on the other site that you do much posting to you give no history of the theatre you are posting, just the pictures. A history of the theatre presents so much more than just the pic.
There was also a Paramount Theatre in Rutland and Bristol, Vermont.
The Center opened as the Globe then became the Century then the Pagoda and finally the Center.
There was a Center theatre in Boston on Washington St. that was also known as the Globe, the Century, and the Pagoda. Could this be the same theatre?
You should update this theatre as Open and under the Imax format, it is now playing the Nascar Imax feature.
The mystery of the third organ at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, it was located in the screening in the basement below the main auditorium. It had been gone for years even before the Arthur Theatre chain closed the Fox. The Lobby organ was a Moller that was sold to a church somewhere in Southern Ilinois. It was replaced with a Wurlitzer and is played before all Broadway Performances. So the Fox in St. Louis has to Wurlitzer’s.
An update on the three organs of the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, Naturally there was and still is the Mighty Wurlitzer in the main auditorium, the second Fox organ was Moller lobby organ that is gone from the Fox and now in a church somewhere in Southern Illinois. The moller was replaced with a wurlitzer for the lobby and is located in the lobby third level south side. It is only played before all Broadway Perfornaces. The third organ at the Fox was located in the basement level screening room. It has been gone for years and when the Fox was restored the screening room was done away with. So as it stands today the Fox has two Wurlitzers.
Bil could you have this reversed on the names of the theatre, according to the history that I have the theatre opened in 1929 as the NuBell Theatre, It had a full stage with fly gallery and an orchestra pit, dressing rooms for vaudeville which at the time was presented along with motion pictures. It was later renamed the Bellflower. Ownership changed several times during its venue as a movie theatre and ws closed in 1977 due to compitition from the Multiplexes. New seating was installed in 1960 on both the main floor and balcony. A new fire wall was installed to close the proscenium opening and a new wide screen was installed along with waterfall curtains.
The Calvary Church purchased the theatre in 1986. They cleaned the theatre up inside and out. They installed a new brick veneer on the exterior walls and changed the lettering on the vertical to HOSANA from HOLIDAY. The address at the time listed it as 16705 Bellflower Rd. but they way numbers change on streets in Ca. it could very well be 16711 now.
Sorry I hit an extra one in the address, to be exact though the city directory lists the true address as 84-110 East Main Street.
I didn’t realize there were two Palace Theatre’s in Stamford, the one on the above site is at 61 Atlantic St.
When you map it the Gem on Main street was a block and a half up from the Palace runniung diagnally to Washington St.
The legends of the Fabulous Fox are many and varied. One of the greatest is how Mary and Leon Strauss saved the Fox from the fate of many other movie palaces. Im 1980 the Fox was in a state of disprepair, the roof leaked causing considerable damage to ornate plaster works, wall grates were kicked in, most of the plaster was no longer on the walls and the ceilings but laying in the floors.The ornate woodword had cracked and chipped. The once elegant carpeting was worn thin from usage and was torn and frayed. The utilities had been turned off because of the expense. The once brilliant lite chandelier was ill lite and missing many of its lights. Leon Strauss saw the Fox as a potential redevelopment project. Leon and his wife Mary felt a duty to save this rare jewel. Mary Strauss was appointed as director of the project. Her first decision was to either restore or rehabilitate the Fox. Since she liked the designs of the Fox she felt any changes would destroy the theatre’s greatness as a movie palace. That’s when she decided to restore the palace to its past grandeur.
She had the curtain that had been lying on the stage , the wood was tested and plaster surfaces to decide how they would be cleaned. Som plaster surfaces could not be duplicated because the design was destroyed. Mary got in touch with the management of the Fox’s twin in detroit and obtained photos and plasters in St. Louis recreated the missing plaster panels.
A group was formed known as the Fox Associates and spared no expense in restoring the Fox. Specialits were found that could do the scagliola on the pillars flanking the lobby and the auditorium. When completed the scagliola resembled a rare maroon marble, it ws costly due to the time it took to complete the task.
Carpeting was replaced and Mary decided to go with the original pattern which had to be speciallly woven. The grand lobby is not carpeted and retains the original terazzo floor. Almost 7,300 yards of ornate maroon colored carpet with elephant heads and designs carpet the ausitorium and balcony floors. The seats were removed and reupholstered with maroon velvet.
During a remodel in 1959 Arthur Theatres reduced the number of seats to 4,503. The orchestra section has 34 rows divided into six sections which run from left to right. The third and fourth section stand in the center of the theatre. For an idean of size the orchestra section extends 133 feet fro the stage. The length from the stage to the last row in the balcony extends 160 feet which is the width of a football field.
At last the Fox has been restored to original granduer and is the talk of the city. The Fox is being used for concerts and broadway shows. The Strausses helped the Fox return to Fabulous for this temple of art and entertainment. The half century old theatre is still alive and thriving today.
I have posted an update under the Fox Theatre in St. Louis since this posting is for the Galazy. I have contacted Ed at the Fox in St. Louis for further informatin on the three organs mentined at the Fox and he will get back to me with the information. I will post it on the Fox listing.
On my down time as a commercial pilot based out of St. Louis I did relief managing for the Arthur Theatre chain and had to report to the offices located on the second level of the lobby on the south side of the mezzanine. There was a mention of three organs in the Fox Theatre to which in all the years I was associated with the Arthur Chain I have knowlege of only one. I tried to contact Ed at the Fox for confirmation and as to where the second and third ones were lcoated. He is off today but left a message for him to contact me. I will post the information when he gets back to me. The Main auditorium organ which was almost sold to a pizza parlor in Arizona was only one of five in the country. This mighty Wirlitzer was designed to Jesse Crawford’s specifications so it is known as the Jesse Crawford model. One of the largest ever built, this massive conglomeratin of nearly 4,000 pipes, 360 stops adn a 50 horsepower electric motor is now the only one left that has a quality sound and rises from the floor in a blaze of light. Stan Kahn still performs on the Mighty Wurlitzer at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis.
Would like to know if this theatre was also known as the Palace Theatre at 66 Washington St. or was the Palace a seperate theatre all together and what was the distance between the two if they were seperate.
The Fox Theatre organ in St. Louis is not in the lobby but rises from the orchestra pit in front of the stage.
According to the Palace Theatre website http://www.onlyatsca.com/ the Palace has performances scheduled in March.
Neo there are some great pics of the interior and exterior on their website. Both vintage and current, Then and now it is still a beautiful palace.
A very complete and colorful History of the Tivoli Theatre complied by the Horning Brothers:
The Tivoli Theater was designed by prominent New York architect Thomas W. Lamb. It reflects Italian Renaissance Revival style architecture with its stucco exterior, red tile roof, ornate cornices, and numerous graceful arches. Completed in 1924 at a cost of $1 million, the theater was, until its closing in 1976, one of the most elegant movie houses in Washington, D.C. In addition to the main theater auditorium, the building contained offices on the upper floors and several two-story shops along the 14th Street and Park Road frontages. In the quarter century it has lain vacant, the building has suffered from neglect, extensive vandalism, and severe water damage due to a leaking roof. This early conceptual rendering of the theater was obtained from the New York City Public Library.
The history of the Knickerbocker Theater, designed by Reginald Geare, and built during the First World War, is closely associated with that of the Tivoli. The owner of the Knickerbocker, theater magnate Harry M. Crandall, operated a chain of movie theaters in Washington. Geare was his primary Washington architect and, in addition to the Knickerbocker, had designed the Metropolitan in 1917 and the Lincoln in 1921. The Knickerbocker was located on the southwest corner of 18th Street and Columbia Road in Adams-Morgan, the present location of the SunTrust Bank.
In a brief 24-hour period spanning January 27-28 1922, a massive storm dropped 26 inches of snow on the city, causing the fragile roof of the Knickerbocker to collapse.
Few of the patrons who had filled the theater that evening for a screening of the comedy hit “Get Rich Quick Wallingford” escaped unharmed. In the heaped rubble of the auditorium, 98 people were found dead and 136 injured. Following the collapse of the Knickerbocker, Crandall released Geare as his primary architect, even though Geare had already begun work on a new theater in the fashionable neighborhood of Columbia Heights.
In his place, Crandall appointed the reputable young Thomas Lamb from New York as architect for all of his subsequent designs, including the Ambassador, built from the remains of the Knickerbocker, and the Tivoli. Lamb began designing the Tivoli less than six months after the Knickerbocker collapse. Incorporating a new understanding of structural integrity which followed in the wake of the disaster, Lamb designed the Tivoli as three separate bodies-stage, auditorium, and perimeter.
The earliest architectural drawings of the Tivoli are labeled Scheme A and date to June 15, 1922- at which point the theater did not have a name but was simply referred to as “Theater Building.” Lamb’s original proposal features ornate, decorative detail throughout the exterior. There is far more stucco detail surrounding the numerous windows on the second floor of this original conceptual design.
The canopy and marquee from these Scheme A drawings also differ from what was eventually built. The artistic streetscape rendering at the beginning of this series of pages reflects this grand original concept. (These original architectural drawings were found in the archives of the Avery Library of Columbia University, New York City.)
Ornate Scheme A drawings were still being produced as late as December 11, 1922. However, by April 12, 1923, the date of the final architectural drawings, the theater building had been given the name Tivoli and the drawings had become simpler and streamlined, nevertheless still fully reflective of the Italian Renaissance style. The change in design was most likely due to constraints imposed by owner Harry M. Crandall, whose initial building cost estimate was $650,000.
On Monday December 4, 1923 construction commenced on the Tivoli, which became the ninth in the chain of Washington theaters owned by Crandall. Although the final building was less ornate than the original conceptual drawings, it still cost over $1 million when it was completed in 1924.
The cross-section of the exterior reveals the wooden brackets and tin soffits under the eaves of the tile roof, masterful detail easily overlooked given the current condition of the building. Thomas Lamb designed a number of other large, luxurious theaters throughout the country, including the Orpheum in Boston, the Strand in New York, the State in St. Louis, the Fox in San Francisco, and the Trans-Lux in Washington, D.C.
Although Lamb was firmly rooted in the Beaux Arts style during the 1920’s, in the next decade he began to incorporate the new architectural currents of Art Deco into his theater design. Gracing the corner of 14th Street and New York Avenue, the sleek Trans-Lux Theater, built in 1936 and torn down in 1975, was one of Washington’s most beautiful Art Deco buildings. The newsletter of the Art Deco Society of Washington described the Trans-Lux Theater as “sweeping down the block like an ocean liner, with a prismatic mirror tower on one end and an RCA radio transmitter with thunderbolt script on the other.” Its illuminated glass tower was one of the largest in the world.
This is a duplicate listing of Mount Baker Theatre #2395. I think it should be combined so that it is one listing.
Nedd to correct the address on the Admiral Theatre, in my data I also have the address as 2347 California Avenue S.W.
The address for the Land of the Sun/Twin Cinema Theatre is 418 West Main Street, Artesia, NM.
The address for the Rio Grande Theatre is 213 North Main Street, Las Cruces, NM. Seating capacity is 703.
I was able to get a seating chart from the Orpheum on a visit there last week. It reads as follows.
Main Level 1264
5 Wheelchair Locations
10 Wheelchair Campanion Seat
Mezzanine 242
Balcony 400
Grand Tier 93
Upper Gallery 99
Lower Gallery 220
2328 Total Seating Capacity as of 2/14/04
Roger why are you being such a stickler on the address. When you look on the other site that you do much posting to you give no history of the theatre you are posting, just the pictures. A history of the theatre presents so much more than just the pic.
Was or is the address for the listing of this theatre is still 54 Watertown Avenue, Waterbury, Ct.