Preservation Wayne's Downtown Historic Theatre Tours - Aug. 27

[Kathleen]

Is this particular tour held at around this same time every year? I want to let some friends / relatives know to save the date for next year.

The PW Theatre Tour is an annual event always held in August. But the date is not predetermined [[like 2nd Saturday of August) because the Tigers schedule and theatre availability have to be checked each year.

[Gistok]

As Kathleen mentioned... it is often very difficult to get all the different venues together for the tours, which is why August seems to be the best time to do so. Even then there were 2 events planned for the evening of the tour date.

Also we like to schedule away from game days... that just drives up the cost of parking downtown on those days. We had enough trouble trying to get the Fox Garage to cooperate with parking set at $2 instead of the regular $25 for a game day.

As much as that seems like gouging to most of us... higher parking prices has really helped out one of our venues in particular... namely the Detroit Opera House. Without their ownership of the Opera House Parking Garage... times would be much tougher financially for the DOH and its' owner Michigan Opera Theatre... with public and private donor money way down. The MOT folks wisely built the massive garage near the Stadia as part of their "endowment" revenue source.

[corktownyuppie]

I went on this tour after hearing it featured on Craig Fahle's show on NPR. I've long been a patron of the arts and cultural center, but this was a truly, truly amazing way to get a behind-the-scenes look at the storied history of our wonderful theaters. Even more remarkable was the number of attendees who came from around the country to learn about the history and architecture of an era long gone.

Cheers to Preservation Wayne...next year I'll come again and bring 10 friends.

[Gistok]

Corktownyuppie... what is even more remarkable is that [[unlike in the neighborhoods) so many of our movie palaces have survived. It was that the land that these theatres were on was in no danger of wanting to be redeveloped... as happened in so many other cities.

Sadly Philadelphia, Baltimore and Cincinnati had all their downtown movie palaces razed in the last 1/2 century. Minneapolis and a few other cities weren't far behind.

When you go to Philly for a show [[say the Lion King).... you either have to go to a 150 year old venue with poor sight lines, such as the Philadelphia Academy of Music, or leave the city for nearby Upper Darby [[in a neighborhood movie palace) to get your touring shows.

Detroit, Cleveland and Los Angeles have the best preserved downtown theatre districts. And although NYC has a lot of theatres on and off Broadway... their best and largest Broadway theatres [[Capitol, Loew's State, Roxy, Paramount) were all pounded to rubble decades ago.... and even Radio City has been considered for demolition a few times.

We are fortunate to have as many large survivors as we have in Detroit....