View of Court Street from the Pearl Street intersection c. 1910. The building
at left on the corner of Pearl and
Court is Denton, Cottier & Daniels (32-38 Court) which constructed its
5-story building in 1908. Adjacent to it, at
40 Court Street, is the Shea's Court Street Theatre(1905). Farther along this
side of the block can be seen the tower
of the Women's Christian Association Building (1888). Across the street from
it on the right is the
Central High School (1852), and in the center of the image is the McKinley
Monument, erected in 1907.
View of the front of the theatre, designed by Leon H. Lampert and Son Theatrical
Architects.
Shea's Court Theatre was one of the most popular of Buffalo vaudeville theaters.
The building changed
hands after 1929 and became vacant by 1942. In 1945, neighbors Denton, Cottier
and Daniels
purchased the building in order to demolish it to make a parking lot. (In
1976, Denton, Cottier
and Daniels moved its store into the suburbs, and its building was demolished,
transforming the
entire block into a parking lot, which it remains today.)
Here is an article from the March 4, 1949 Buffalo Courier-Express
with reminisciences
of the Court Theater.
The Bandwagon Miss Philomena Cavanaugh who was associated for many years with the Shea Theater interest was talking the other night about the palmy days of vaudeville when the Court St. theater stood where now yawns a parking lot next to Denton Cottier & Daniels. Cavvy pointed out that next Sunday will be the anniversary of the opening of that house by Shea. She said the date was March 6, 1905, and it opened with a resident stock company headed by William Farnum. The first production was Shakespeare's "As You Like It." So this would seem an appropriate time for the Bandwagon to do a little reminiscing on the subject of Shea's, as everybody called the theater in those times. Moreover, it will be something in the way of a public salute to those responsible for keeping the Shea name on some of our theater marquees where it has been for more than a generation.For a while, it was feared the name might come down as a result of the recent theatrical shake-up hereabouts. But first a few words about Cavvy. Before she went with the Shea people, she worked as a newspaper reporter. That was quite a while ago and she has another birthday coming up next month but she doesn't pay attention to them any more. She's as chipper as ever and keenly alert about Buffalo people and affairs. We called at her home in Fargo Ave., and we had a very pleasant time kicking the gong around. Not that Miss Cavanaugh is responsible for all the data about to be revealed in this historic masterpiece. Some we remembered, some we had from others and some we looked up at the Buffalo Public Library. Before the Court St. house was built, the site was occupied by Wahle's Opera House, a theater playing first class legitimate productions and competing with the Academy of Music in Main St. near Seneca. Wahle's went to seed, changed its name and finally petered out. Shea and his associates Pliny B. McNaughton, John Kreitner, Robert Shelling, W.W. Pierce and for a short time Thomas B. Lockwood decided to build a new theater and a very handsome one it was, too, right up to the time they razed it a few years ago. The dynamic Shea was one of the group of men headed by E.F. Albee and B.F. Keith who sponsored the nation's principal two-a-day vaudeville circuit. At the time of his death, May 16, 1934, Variety commented that he was the "last of the Mohicans, the lone survivor of that colorful band of men who started from scratch in the 1880's and nursed vaudeville from a museum to the most popular form of entertainment of its time." Shea was a rugged, reticent, sometimes brusque personality, with wiry white hair in his latter years and thick, black eyebrows. There's an excellent portrait of him hanging in Shea's Buffalo. In those first few years after it became the town's vaudeville house everybody went to Shea's in the course of a week. The saying was that you were sure to be pleased by one or two of the acts on the bill even though bored by others. We were never affluent enough to have season tickets as some did. We always envied these regulars as they took their seats before curtain time and receieved bows of recognition from Henry Marcus, director of the orchestra, brother of Judge Marcus and an outstanding musician. Cavvy expressed doubts the other night that vaudeville will ever come back. She said the members of the younger generations have no idea of what a vaudeville show was. Usually it consisted of about ten acts, with one or two big names for headliners, with some acrobats, rube and dialect comics, a dramatic sketch, occasional trained seals, dogs or other animals and novelty acts. One commentator refers to it fondly as "the two-a-day variety show all of us knew and many of us loved was a complete characterization of a pleasantly gullible, clowning America, physically bestirring itself, sunnily unsophisticated." Some great and popular names were associated with vaudeville. Miss Cavanaugh recalled that Ethel Barrymore played the Court St in the "Twelve-Pound Look" and was the first star to collect a salary of $1,000 a week which in those times was certainly not hay. Bernhardt, Nazimova, Valeska Suratt were among other legitimate stars who took occasional flings at vaudeville. |
Reference information from Ranjit Sandhu's invaluable manuscript,
"Buffalo Theatres Prior to 1930" at the
Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.
To read more about Buffalo's colorful vaudeville
theater, read "The Magic of Vaudeville" by Jim Bisco
in the Spring 2005
Heritage Press magazine.