Olympia Music Hall

A couple of Theatre Historical Society members were in downtown Worcester on June 25 and report that the Art is still sitting closed up with no evidence of any remodeling going on.

Here is the real estate listing:
http://tinyurl.com/27kp3e

I drove past the site today, and there isn’t a theatre there. (wish I had taken a photo, sorry)

The theatre was built by George “Doc” Lothrop, who was a colorful character who ran theatres and produced shows in eastern New England including in Boston and Providence. He presented second-run or second-string shows, plays and musicals, and minstrel troupes. Later, vaudeville and early movies. Like many smaller American theatres of the 19th Century, this one is an “upstairs house”, with the main floor one flight up. The MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for this house has a photo taken in May 1941, when it was the Olympia Theatre. There was a vertical sign above and a triangular marquee with 3 lines. Movies playing are Fred MacMurray in “Virginia” plus “Man I Married”. Walton’s Restaurant is to the right. The Report states that the Olympia has been a MGM customer for over 10 years; that it’s in Good condition; and that it has 650 seats on the main floor and 536 seats in the balcony, total: 1186. It became an E.M. Loew house, perhaps sometime in the 1930s ?? In the post-War era a number of EML theatres were “modernized” and given the name “Fine Arts”, and this apparently was one of them. I understand that it’s under the same management as the Paris Theatre nearby.

In 1975, the Manager of this theatre took me on a brief tour upstairs here, where he had discovered a room which had been walled off. (they must have been doing some renovation work.) Inside, covered in soot, were a few dozen rolled 40x60s all from the years 1942 and 1943. Littered on the floor, were lobby cards and stills. There was also an area above the ceiling of the auditorium where I saw old glass light covers. I grabbed a few choice items from the old “poster room” and lugged them out to my car. One of the posters was a Yankee Doodle Dandy which I sold to a fellow Manager at the GCC Hanover Mall, named Jim Mahoney. I understand Jim had this poster displayed on the wall of his office there for a few years. I wish I had appreciated this stuff back then.

The theatre was built in 1890 as Lothrop’s Opera House. It was also called Lynch’s Pleasant Street Theatre, and the Fine Arts Theatre.

The theatre is now called the Art.