Shea's Buffalo Theater

About this property

Shea's Performing Arts Center is a theater for touring Broadway musicals and special events in Buffalo, New York. Originally called Shea's Buffalo, it was opened in 1926 to show silent movies. It took one year to build the entire theatre. Shea's boasts one of the few theater organs in the US that is still in operation in the theater for which it was designed. Shea's Buffalo, the flagship of the theater chain, was designed by the noted firm of Rapp and Rapp of Chicago. Modeled in a combination of Spanish and French Baroque and Rococo styles, the theatre was designed to resemble opera houses and palaces of Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries. Originally the seating accommodated nearly 4,000 people, but several hundred seats were removed in the 1930s to make more comfortable accommodations in the orchestra area; there are now 3,019 seats at Shea's. The interior was designed by designer/artist Louis Comfort Tiffany with most of the elements still in place today. Many of the furnishings and fixtures were supplied by Marshall Field's in Chicago and included immense Czechoslovak crystal chandeliers of the finest quality. The interior contained over 1-acre (4,000 m2) of seating. The cost of construction and outfitting of the theater in 1926 was just over $1.9 million. This was at a time when a new house could be purchased for $3,000 and a new Model A Ford was $1,000. The theater opened on January 16, 1926, with the film King of Main Street, starring Adolphe Menjou. When Michael Shea retired in 1930, Vincent R. McFaul, who had worked with Mr. Shea from 1900, was the general manager of the Shea's chain. He owned and managed several dozen Shea's Theaters, per Mike Shea's and Vincent's plan until his death in 1955. Loew's Theatres took over the chain's interests in 1948. The theatre had a not-so-unusual history of falling into some disrepair in the 1960s and 1970s when downtown Buffalo was in decline. It was operated at that time by Loew's Corporation as primarily a showcase for "Blacksploitation" films such as the Super Fly series. The theatre was owned at that time by Leon Lawrence Sidell, who was failing to pay his taxes. A small group of folks, led by Curt Mangel, and including Steve LaManna, Ben Hiltz, Dan Harter and 9 others known as the original "Friends of the Buffalo" theatre began doing work on the organ, and Mr. Mangel became the engineer of the building. Mangel, and others, at times, actually lived in the building, in the upper floors of the dressing rooms for almost a year, while working on various needs of the theatre. When it became apparent that the theatre would default to the city on back taxes owed by Leon Lawrence Sidell, Loew's was preparing to leave and strip the theatre of its contents. The Friends went through the theatre and inventoried every item. In a landmark court decision, a judge blocked Loew's from removing the contents, including chandeliers, furniture, organ and projection equipment. The claim was that Loew's owned these items, and legal counter-argument stated that the items were an integral part of the theatre. The judge actually toured the theatre, including the organ chambers, and ruled for the Friends and the City.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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