Author: Laurin Jeffrey (Toronto, Canada)
Website: Click here
Photo location: Buffalo, NY, USA
View on Map
Category: [cool]  

I have started to develop a taste for theatre. Not just going, which I do enjoy sometimes, but finding the little forgotten ones and shooting them. The group I shoot with (DK Photo Group) will likely be doing a gallery show in 2007 on theatres, but that is for another time.

I travel to Buffalo a lot to shoot, as it has so many abandoned buildings it affords me a lot of subject matter. One of the locals has graciously helped us before with locations and he steered us to this one on a fine and warm fall day. From what I can dig up about this building, it would appear that John G. Sattler commissioned this theatre in 1914 and the architect was Henry L. Spann (possibly collaborating with his brother William T. Spann).

John was the same Sattler who was a local real-estate tycoon and the same Sattler who owned the late department store. This 928-seat, $35,000 "fireproof" structure was built in 1914, on the site of the old wood-frame Casino Theatre.

As far as is known, there was no stage, only a movie screen. In 1919 or 1920 the theatre changed hands and it was renamed the Broadway. In 1922 new management installed a Marr & Colton 2-manual organ. Later still the Basil brothers took over and renamed it Basil's Broadway. In recent years it was used as a church (Joy Temple), but now it is abandoned.

Other submissions by this author: :  Vintage  ::  Badlands  :

This submission has been viewed 8238 times.