Lost and Found
Written by PA Heritage Staff in the Lost and Found category and the Fall 1995 issue Topics in this article: architecture and architects, Chicago, Erie, Erie Civic Center Authority, George Rapp, National Register of Historic Places, Philadelphia, Preservation Pennsylvania, Warner TheaterLost
In operation between 1910 and 1916, the studio of filmmaker Siegmund “Pop” Lubin, located at Twentieth Street and Indiana Avenue in North Philadelphia, employed seven hundred people in its heyday. Dubbed “Lubinville” by the press, it was one of the largest and most advanced motion picture studios of its day. The studio featured a glass enclosed stage area large enough for movie directors to simultaneously shoot five different scenes! This stage area, similar to a greenhouse, was outfitted with a special type of “prism glass” invented and patented by Lubin which diffused light, eliminating shadows in interior sets. The building was destroyed by arson in May – during the same week that Preservation Pennsylvania issued its 1995 list of endangered historic properties.
Found
The Warner Theater in Erie typifies the opulence of gilded movie palaces associated with the Warner Brothers Company. Built by the Pennsylvania Theatre Company, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers, the palatial theater seats more than twenty-five hundred patrons. Completed in 1930, the theater – designed by the renowned Chicago architectural firm of C. W. and George Rapp – cost one and a half million dollars to build and decorate. More than an acre of gold leaf and silver leaf was used in its lavish interior decoration. Its lobby features a terrazzo floor, mammoth arches, vaults, columns, gold-backed mirrors, and a grand staircase. The Warner Theater, entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, serves as the Erie Civic Center.
