The Towne theater opened in 1917 as the Miller theatre, a vaudeville house with three seating levels of 1700 seats built by the brewery of that name within and behind their nine story hotel (of red brick trimmed in limestone and stained glass ballroom windows) of the same name formerly at 717 N. 3rd Street. Architects Wolff and Ewens produced a traditional auditorium using classical ornamentation on the cartouche-peaked, rounded rectangle proscenium frame and also on the pavilion tent-like canopies to the flanking double level box seats. In 1946, the new owners renamed the faded theater the Towne and spent a lot of money remodeling to compete with the downtown movie palaces of more recent vintage. Other architects were engaged to remodel the auditorium and facade of the first story with the theater entrance (the facade of the hotel being unaffected) using a two-sided aluminum marquee by Milwaukee’s Poblocki sign co. which had altered the marquees of hundreds of theaters throughout the Midwest. In the auditorium, the boxes were removed and the voids draped over in plain panels of 50% fulness and the house curtain on the stage was replaced with a seven-point suspension contour curtain of a densely striped silver satin. The orchestra pit was also floored over and modernistic chandeliers of concentric glass and aluminum discs replaced the more traditional fixtures in the corners adjacent to the elliptical center dome. In addition to the hotel’s lobbies and lounges being completely remodeled with lots of glass and laminated blonde wood, the theater’s lobby and vestibule were also completely remodeled from the wood paneled and mosaic tile floor to a new terrazzo-floored ticket lobby in a “pathways” pattern that started out on the sidewalk, with the ticket booth a triple station rectangle with canted corners in plate glass above an engine-turned engraved stainless steel wainscot in a moire pattern. The new plate glass entry with glass doors with clear plastic push bars was in harmony with the new ceiling of squares of mirrors, each centered with a reflector-bowl light bulb. A longish tunnel promenade with a dense acanthus patterned carpet wound its way through the mass of the hotel building to the auditorium building, which sat at a right angle to the hotel tower. This newly adorned promenade was surfaced with polished marble wall panels and a ceiling of black plaster with recessed illuminated air diffusers as rectangles on a grid pattern. The rear of the main floor promenade adjacent to the new 20-foot-long candy stand, featured a wall of frames of the signatures of notables who had appeared on the Miller’s stage, or the Towne’s screen. One could sit and view such severely simple black metal squares with circular stainless inserts from the faux-leather banquettes against the opposite wall, with equally faux greenery at the back of them. The basement lounges featured the same carpeting as it abutted stairways with curved blonde wood rails above smooth plaster balustrades, the rails being supported above them with balls of polished blonde wood on two-foot centers. A mural of a giant large-leafed plant adorned one recessed wall with recessed downlights in the soffit above. Traditional overstuffed armchairs and settees of that era were accompanied by simple dark wood end tables and large lamps with drum shades. All this newness was not enough to gain the first run films that the other downtown theaters possessed as the formerly chain theaters that they were (then held in studio ownership through simple sub-corporations as a thin screen to obscure true ownership). The new owners therefore filed suit in federal court under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and what was later called the “junior Paramount” case ensued, and was part of the set of decisions which ultimately divested the movie chains of their theatres. Sadly, this victory was short-lived, as the ‘50s and 60s brought television to the fore and theaters struggled against lost audience and the flight of people to the suburbs where suburban single screens and, later, multiplexes tore the audiences from the downtowns of America.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 06:58:20 +0000
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