Loew's Midland Theatre
Kansas City, Missouri

Opened: October 28, 1927 Capacity: 3573 Architect: Thomas W. Lamb Organ: Robert Morton 4/20

The lofty mirror just inside the front doors exemplifies the fine detailing found throughout the theatre. Directly over the entry is a musicians' gallery.

The autumn of 1927 brought a major change in the character of new Loew's theatres. Until that time, they were little more than scaled-up vaudeville houses with stodgy Moller organs. The Penn Theatre in Pittsburgh (Rapp & Rapp) and the Midland were elaborate palaces of the sort the public had come to expect. The Midland was a particular breakthrough for Lamb, who had been responsible for many of the earlier designs. It marked the beginning of his Baroque period, which culminated in the San Francisco Fox.

Often seen as a warm-up for the San Francisco Fox, the Midland Theatre is perfectly able to stand on its own. The celebrated "L" shaped lobby is actually two distinct and quite different spaces unified by a complex mezzanine extending into both. A special feature of the lower lounge suite was a room salvaged intact from the William K. Vanderbilt mansion in New York, demolished two years earlier. In both design and execution, the plasterwork in the lobbies ranks with the finest anywhere.

While some of the lobby details do suggest what was later done at the Fox Theatre in San Francisco, it is the auditorium which most anticipates the later house, especially the organ screens and sidewall arches. An intermediate evolution of the design, with very different details, can be seen in Loew's Ohio Theatre in Columbus.

Loew's operated the Midland Theatre until 1961, when it was bizarrely recast as a bowling alley. The rapid failure of major-league bowling brought in Durwood Theatres, multi-screen pioneers. Small theatres were developed in the lower lounge and an adjacent storefront -- a preview of what was to become common later in the decade. Through all of this, the theatre was not badly treated, and it survives as a performing arts center in a very high state of preservation.

The Robert Morton organ remained in use until 1946. It was reactivated during the bowling era and subsequently removed. Following a term in a California pizzeria, it came back to Kansas City, but to the Civic Center Music Hall and not the Midland Theatre.

Photos courtesy of the Theatre Historical Society of America
http://www.historictheatres.org

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