I wasn't expecting to find a gem of architectural and motion picture history in Erie, Pennsylvania, but finding the city's Warner Theater was a pleasant surprise.
We recently traveled along Lake Erie through Ohio, with the plan to go as far as east as Ashtabula, Ohio, before turning around to come back home. We somehow ended up over Ohio's eastern border in Erie, Pennsylvania, and decided to explore downtown Erie before checking the Presque Isle and Presque Isle Pierhead lighthouses and heading back west towards Detroit.
I snapped a photo of a bright red trolley car running past the historic Boston Store and Mercantile Building on State Street, before spotting the Warner Theater as I turned around to head back towards the car.
The four Warner Brothers showed films in Pennsylvania and Ohio theaters before opening their own theater in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1903, beginning to produce films in 1918, and incorporating Warner Brothers Pictures in 1923, the studio responsible for many classic films and beloved cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Tweety Bird.
Warner Brothers commissioned Erie's Warner Theater in 1929. The opulent theater's construction cost $1.5 million, a surprising figure given the fact that it opened in 1931 during one of the country's worst economic depressions.
The theater, designed by Rapp & Rapp of Chicago in an Art Deco-style with the ancient Egyptian-influenced motifs fashionable at that time, opened as a grand movie palace and vaudeville stage.
The Warner Theater operated primarily as a movie theater until 1976. By the early 1980s, the city of Erie bought the theater and converted it into a performing arts center with hopes for it as the centerpiece of a downtown revival, and the Warner Theater earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.
A sign I spotted in the box office window listed the varied performers who appeared at the Warner Theater over the years, including Tony Bennett, Milton Berle, Johnny Cash, Nat King Cole, Alice Cooper, Bill Cosby, Sammy Davis Jr., BB King, Jay Leno, Meatloaf, Wayne Newton, The Temptations, Mel Torme, Train, and Trisha Yearwood.
By the 1990s, the Warner Theater restoration became the highest priority for arts funding among civic leaders seeing the old movie palace as a key component of downtown Erie's revitalization.
A $7 million state appropriation in 1994 and formation of the Warner Theater Preservation Trust marked the start of a period of additional fundraising and restoration proceeding in fits and starts.
Pennsylvania released the $7 million appropriation in 1997, and the preservation group raised $3.3 million by early 1998. Today, total funding for the project stands at over $20 million.
Daniel Coffey and Associates of Chicago and Crowner/King of Erie became the project architects.
Work through the remainder of the decade and into the next decade included restoration of the theater's interior with painting and restoring or replicating some of the grand decor like gold leaf and intricate tapestries, a new roof, new seating, upgraded lighting, updated heating and cooling systems, a new entrance, building expansion, and renovated restrooms.
Work on the project awaits completion with the anticipated release of another injection of money from the state for final renovations like an expanded stage, improved dressing rooms, upgraded loading docks, and restoring or replicating the grand curtain and draperies.
Today, the 2,250-seat theater, with its expansive 65-foot by 28-foot proscenium-style stage, hosts over 150 events each year that include theater performances, programs from the Erie Philharmonic and Lake Erie Ballet, weddings, and other private receptions.
Check in with the Warner Theater at its Facebook page or learn more about its history in a book by Barbara J. Hauck. Profits from sales of the book, "A Picture Palace Transformed: How Erie's Warner Theater Survived a Changing World", benefit the restoration, expansion and maintenance of the theater.
The vintage look of the Warner Theater's exterior reminded me a bit of some of the old movie theaters still barely hanging in there as I grew up in metro Detroit. I only wish we'd been able to tour the inside of the theater, which photos remind me of the opulent movie houses the beautifully restored Fox on Woodward Avenue in Detroit.
I guess it's a good excuse for another trip along the Lake Erie shore!
© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved
By just looking at these photos seems like I'm at the place personally.
Posted by: Home Theater Design | April 06, 2010 at 05:42 AM