Sunday, April 19, 2009

In 1929, something to take your mind off the Depression.

William Fox (born Fuchs Vilmos) founded Fox Pictures and built a chain of movie theaters in which to show his films. Fox intended his theaters in St. Louis, Detroit, Brooklyn, Atlanta, and San Francisco to be spectacular. He succeeded. The picture above is the lobby of the Fox Theater in St. Louis, which has its own Wurlitzer.

The picture below is taken from the balcony. It makes the expression 'over the top' seem inadequate. The Fox Theaters in St. Louis and Detroit are almost identical twins.

4 comments:

sleepyrn said...

The good news is that he kept people employed building the huge and rather ostentatious theaters. The bad news is that no one could afford to go see the movies.

Jim said...

sleep -- the oddest thing is that the lobby is earthquake-proof -- Fox's wife helped designed it. She lived in California so she thought everywhere had continuous earthquakes.

stan said...

I wish more theaters would be built this way. Most new theaters are boring pieces of poo.

moni said...

I remember even as a child, attending the Fox Theater. It was strictly a movie venue at that time. I took a streetcar that ran up and down Grand Avenue. Grand Avenue was also where I went to the old Sportsman Park to watch my favorite team, the St. Louis Browns..American League. Ahh, old, old, memories