ABSTRACT
In 1913 Scottish-born American architect Thomas Lamb designed a theatre on 116th Street in Harlem, New York City, which was then a prosperous middle-class neighbourhood. This theatre, which survives today intact as a First Corinthian Baptist Chapel, looked like a legitimate theatre and was decorated in the Adams style. The auditorium had triple-stepped boxes at the side and a deep balcony, the whole set behind a façade which was supposedly a one-third replica of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. But the Regent was built not as a legitimate theatre but as a vaudeville also showing movies. After a false start ‘Roxy’ Rothapfel, who was later to build both the great Roxy cinema on Broadway, destroyed in 1961 after a lifespan of scarcely thirty years, and also the still surviving Radio City Music Hall, took over as manager. An orchestra was engaged. Magnificent uniforms were bought for the staff and the Regent reopened with The Last Days of Pompeii, a silent movie with orchestral accompaniment personally selected by Roxy. There was the duet from Aida for the love interest, Lohengrin plus choir for the frenzied scenes after the eruption of the volcano. The press was ecstatic. The Motion Picture News of 6 December 1913 had ‘a single criticism to be entertained, and that has nothing to do
with the performance itself. This concerns the price of admission. It should be 25 instead of 15 cents.’
