The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States was originally built in 1904 as the Franklin Square Theatre regularly scheduling burlesque shows, Broadway touring shows and headline acts transitioning to showing silent films by 1912 when vaudeville magnate Sylvester Poli purchased the theatre from the estate of Pauline L. Taylor.
Poli remodeled the theatre, renamed it The Grand, and continued to show silent movies. In 1926 he hired renowned theatre designer Thomas W. Lamb, doubled the theatre's seating capacity to 3,500 and transformed the building into a palatial showcase, including a two story lobby with mirrored walls, marbleized columns, an ornate grand staircase, and an immense chandelier in the main auditorium, just in time for the beginning of sound film, or the talkies in 1927.
In 1928, Poli sold his theatre holdings to William Fox who then renamed it the Loew's Poli. After another change of ownership, Sumner Redstone and Redstone Theaters purchased the building in 1967 opening it as Showcase Cinemas and continued operations as a multiscreen movie house until 1998 when Redstone's National Amusements closed the theatre. In 2002, National Amusements transferred ownership to the non-profit Worcester Center for the Performing Arts, established by Ed Madaus and Paul Demoga.
After extensive fundraising efforts and building community support, the theatre opened in March 2008 and was named the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, after one of the theatre's corporate sponsors Hanover Insurance donated much of the seed money to make the opening become a reality.
Today, the theatre has seating capacity for 2300 patrons, and hosts nationally prominent entertainers, Broadway national touring companies, family touring companies, as well as providing a local outlet for community based artists and organizations.
The theatre, under the name Poli's Palace Theater, was added the National Register of Historic Places in January 2011.
Read more about Hanover Theatre For The Performing Arts: Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words performing arts, hanover, theatre, performing and/or arts:
“More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.”
—Uta Hagen (b. 1919)
“Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“If an irreducible distinction between theatre and cinema does exist, it may be this: Theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space. Cinema ... has access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“And no one, it seemed, had had the presence of mind
To initiate proceedings or stop the wheel
From the number it was backing away from as it stopped:
It was performing prettily; the puncture stayed unseen....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)