Shea's Performing Arts Center
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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 built in 1926 to show silent movies. It took one year to build the entire theatre. Shea's boasts one of the few theatre theater organs that are still in operation today in the country. The Mighty Wurlitzer is a typical theatre organ that has all the traditional stops as long as other sounds like a full percussion section. The organ has four manuals.
[edit] History
Shea's Buffalo, 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 16th and 17th 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. The interior was designed by world renowned 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 in Chicago, and included immense Czechoslovakian crystal chandeliers of the finest quality. The interior contained over one acre of seating. The cost of construction and outfittng of the theater in 1926 was just over $1,900,000. 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 January 16, 1926 with the film King of Main Street, starring [Adolph Menjou). When Michael Shea retired in 1930, Shea's interests were headed by V. R. McFaul, who owned and managed several dozen Shea's Theaters in the metro Buffalo area until his death in 1955. Loew's Corp took over the chain's interests in 1948, upon the Deregulation of the Movie and Theater Industry adjudicated by the Supreme Court.
In 2006, to commemorate the theater's 80th birthday, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of the world-renowned JoAnn Falletta played a concert there with Anthony Neuman playing the organ. Highlights of the program included Camille Saint-Saëns "Organ" Symphony 3 in C minor, selections from The Phantom of the Opera, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Louis Vierne's Carillon de Westminster.
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