Center Theatre (New York City)

The Center Theatre was a theater located at 1230 Sixth Avenue, the southeast corner of West 49th Street in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Seating 3,500, it was originally designed as a movie palace in 1932 and later achieved fame as a showcase for live musical ice-skating spectacles. It was demolished in 1954, the only building in the original Rockefeller Center complex to have been torn down.

The Center Theatre was originally called the RKO Roxy Theatre and opened December 29, 1932 with the RKO film The Animal Kingdom and a live stage show. It was intended as a smaller sister to the 6,000 seat Radio City Music Hall one block away, which at first did not show films. The smaller theater was named after producer Samuel L. Rothafel, aka "Roxy", who was engaged by Rockefeller Center to supervise the design and operation of the two theaters. After the initial failure of the Music Hall in its first weeks, Rothafel suffered a heart attack and never returned to his new theaters. A successful lawsuit in 1933 by the owners of the original Roxy Theatre on Seventh Avenue, claiming ownership of the "Roxy" name, caused the new theater to be renamed the RKO Center.

The Center Theatre featured an elegant Art Deco design which was muted by comparison to the lavish Radio City Music Hall. The architect was Edward Durrell Stone and decor was by Eugene Schoen. The spare but striking design featured curved walls paneled in mahogany. It had a three-tiered metal chandelier weighing six tons, and a ceiling studded with circles decorated in half-relief with mythological figures. Three shallow mezzanines provided an unobstructed view of the stage. The large stage contained turn-screw lifts as did the orchestra pit. There was also a 34-rank Wurlitzer theatre organ with a single stained wood console at stage right similar to the Radio City Wurlitzer twin consoles which were finished in ebony. Betty Gould and Raymond Bohr were some of the organ's featured artists.

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