The Riverside Theater is probably the most graceful, if not the most opulent of Milwaukee’s theatres and it comes by its name, honestly, by fighting since opening on April 29, 1928, to keep the adjacent Milwaukee river out of its basement. When the RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) vaudeville circuit was looking for a larger, fancier venue to replace their 1908 Majestic Theater, they bought into the firm demolishing the old Empire Hotel and Tavern at the prominent intersection of Grand Avenue (now Wisconsin Ave.) and West Water Street (now Plankinton Ave.) to build the Riverside within the new 12-story Empire office building with an alley and the river forming the other two boundaries. Vaudeville was on the decline by this time, so the theatre envisioned as a presentation house with 2,558 seats on the orchestra level plus three boxes on each wall below the organ screens and in a huge balcony reached by a lobby elevator. Local architects Charles Kirchoff and Thomas Rose had done well in designing the famous Palace Theatre in New York City, so they were selected to bring about this French baroque vista in colors of ivory and gilt with peacock blue accents. A mixture of vaudeville and films continued for years until Warner Bros. took over for a brief period until their own opulent Warner (now called the Grand) was completed in 1931, just two blocks away. The ceiling features a giant central dome with tri-color cove lighting nicely concealed by an ornate rim of cabochon-faced crests. The original Grand Drapery graced the proscenium arch with 20 swags of teal velour with galloons in ochre and tassels in henna red upon a lambrequin of Austrian folds decorated in beige and fringed in henna. Behind and below this the beige teaser curtain hung in swags and jabots while the tormentors were in beige framed in teal galloons and bullion-style fringe.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 06:28:35 +0000
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