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Fox Theatre (St. Louis)

The Fox Theatre is one of the most famous theaters in St. Louis, Missouri. "The Fabulous Fox" or "The Fox", as locals call it, is located in the arts district of the Grand Center area in Midtown St. Louis, one block north of Saint Louis University.

It was designed in the 1920s by an architect specializing in theaters, C. Howard Crane, in a style known as Siamese Byzantine. Reporters in 1929 described the Fox Theatres in St. Louis and Detroit as "awe-inspiringly fashioned after Hindoo (sic) Mosques of Old India, bewildering in their richness and dazzling in their appointments … striking a note that reverberates around the architectural and theatrical worlds." William Fox nicknamed the style the "Eve Leo Style" in tribute to his wife, who decorated the interior with furnishings, paintings and sculpture she had bought on her trips overseas.

History

Originally opened in 1929 by William Fox as a movie palace for silent films, the Fox has survived through the years, and is now a versatile theater.

When the theater opened on January 31, 1929 it was the second-largest theater in the United States, with 5,060 seats.

The Fox Theatre closed in March of 1978 and was purchased by Fox Associates in 1981. The theater was restored at a price of at least $3 million dollars and in comparison, the Fox cost $6 million dollars to build in 1929. The Fox reopened in September 1982 with the musical Barnum. Its interior was patterned after its slightly larger architectural twin, the Detroit Fox Theatre.

The Fox currently seats 4,278 theatergoers plus 234 in the private Fox Club.

In September 2007, the venue celebrated 25 years since its re-opening with a concert featuring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Linda Eder and a day where the theatre showed movies in a throwback to its beginnings.

Notable events

The theatre hosted a 60th birthday concert for St. Louis–born, early rock and roll pioneer, Chuck Berry in 1987. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones was the project's musical director and backing band leader. Taylor Hackford incorporated the concert into a documentary film about Berry and released the film as Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll as a feature. In the film, Berry mentions that as a child growing up in St. Louis he was denied entrance to the Fox to watch a film because he was African-American.

Theater organ

The theater's Wurlitzer pipe organ cost $75,000 in 1929. It has four manuals, 36 ranks and 348 stops. Restoration of the organ was undertaken by Marlin Mackley in 1981.

Tom Terry was the theater's official resident organist from 1929 to 1935. The organ was not played for the public from 1935 to 1952. In 1952, Stan Kann was named resident organist. He served as organist at the Fox for 22 years and became something of a legend to theater organ aficionados.

A second organ was installed in the lobby during the theater's renovation in the 1980s. The lobby organ has only two manuals and 11 ranks and had been originally installed in the Majestic Theatre in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1930.