Fabulous!

Yesterday Hubby Tony and I went on a walking tour of the Fox Theater. The "Fabulous Fox" started out as a movie palace that opened in 1929 and closed 1978. It was restored and reopened in 1982 as a performing arts center that hosts major touring Broadway musicals and plays.

Flickr

Our tour group gathered in the lobby, where a guide told us about some of the building's history. Originally there were five Fox Theaters built by William Fox to showcase the films of his Fox Film Corporation (which later merged with Twentieth Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox). The theater cost $6 million to construct. In addition to the St. Louis Fox, three others have survived (in Atlanta, Detroit, and San Francisco).

The interior of the building is decorated in a style referred to as “Siamese Byzantine,” described as a conglomeration of Moorish, far Eastern, Egyptian, Babylonian and Indian themes of various periods. There are very few unadorned elements in the lobby, main halls, and theater. I learned on the tour is that everything is made from plaster.

Lobby

The first stop on the tour was a balcony right above the lobby for a brief performance on the 'smaller' of the Wurlitzer organs, which is played to entertain people waiting for the theater doors to open. This one has two keyboards and 11 sets of pipes. The large one has four keyboards and 36 sets of pipes. Both are maintained and played by volunteers from the St. Louis Theatre Organ Society.

Unfortunately, the comedian Jerry Seinfeld was performing that night The orchestra pit was covered to allow for floor seating, so we couldn't see the big organ. We also couldn't go backstage. (Side note-There was a family on the tour that had children who looked to be tweens. Mom asked them if they had ever heard of Jerry Seinfeld. They had not. I felt old.)

This is the first time I had been in the theater and gotten an unobstructed view of the stage:

I can never figure out which I like better-the stage or the elaborate Moorish-style globe chandelier that's 13 feet in diameter, weighs more than two tons and holds more than 200 light bulbs. It's actually suspended from an ornate ceiling starburst, but I couldn't capture it from the angle of my seat).

The building's elegance even extends to the carpet. When the theater was renovated, the original 1929 carpet was duplicated. I learned that every elephant's tusk point toward the main stage.

I thoroughly enjoyed the theater tour, but I'm not crossing it off my to-do list until I can go back a second time to see the entire building. I bet on top of the big items there will be a lot of discovered little details, too.

Five years ago: Bentonville Or Bust