First built for vaudeville, this theater has been an anchor in St. Louis since 1917

American Theater, St. Louis Missouri

Date added: November 05, 2023 Categories:

Primary (west) and St. Charles St. (north) elevations (1917)

Built in 1917 as the Orpheum Theater, a vaudeville house, from plans drawn up by theater specialist G. Albert Lansburgh, the building is one of only two historic theaters surviving in St. Louis' Central Business District. One of the city's most outstanding examples of Beaux-Arts Classicism, the Theater is distinguished by an unusually fine terra cotta facade featuring monumental figural and decorative sculpture and a richly ornamented interior, both of which survive with only minor alterations.

By the second decade of the twentieth century, the center of St. Louis retail and office building district had shifted from its nineteenth-century location on the riverfront to a corridor stretching westward from Seventh to Twelfth Streets. As early as 1915, steps were underway to establish a new hotel and theater district at the northern edge of downtown between Seventh and Ninth Streets where, within a little more than a decade, three major hotels, two movie palaces and a vaudeville theater were infusing new life in the city center.

The first lodging and entertainment facilities to appear were the Orpheum Theater, a vaudeville house, and the Statler Hotel, both completed in 1917 side by side on Ninth Street. The dominant force behind the theater project, St. Louisan Louis A. Cella, had broad experience in theatrical enterprises with financial interests in seven local theaters along with two vaudeville franchises. Cella's celebrated Midas touch in the field of finance had earned him the youthful title of "Spade Kid" (because of his ability to "dig up" money) and later, a reputation as the city's "greatest single-handed money maker." At the time of his death in 1918, his entrepreneurial talents had built a fortune estimated between $12 and $15 million which extended from real estate to racetrack operations, gambling casinos, and theaters.

Under a lease agreement signed in June 1915 by Cella, President of Southern Real Estate and Finance Co., and Martin Beck, President of the Orpheum Theater Co., provision was made for the construction of the Orpheum Theater by lessee Beck at a cost of not less than $250,000. Cella, who had acquired the parcel in 1905, reserved rights as lessor to inspect all materials, plans, and specifications at any time until the building was completed; he also held a financial interest in the theater but no control in management. When the Orpheum opened Labor Day, 1917, the new $500,000 vaudeville house joined more than two dozen theaters in the Orpheum Circuit, one of the country's oldest and largest vaudeville companies. Although previously, Orpheum acts had been shown in the Cella-controlled Columbia Theater (demolished), the new Orpheum was the first St. Louis theater devoted exclusively to Orpheum bookings and thus secured direct entry of the circuit into the city.

The first new theater building to appear in the city in some years, the Orpheum received wide acclaim locally as an "event of importance An the theatrical history of St. Louis" and a "revelation in theatrical architecture." The building was designed by Gustave Albert Lansburgh, a San Francisco architect whose theater designs were gaining national attention at the time for their functional programs as well as artistic merits. After graduating from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1906, Lansburgh began independent practice in San Francisco in 1908, By 1910 he had completed his first Orpheum Commission, a theater in Los Angeles. By 1916, Lansburgh had supplied plans for seven theaters in the Orpheum circuit including one in Kansas City, Missouri (demolished). According to the Architect and Engineer, Lansburgh's facility in theater planning and mastery of the functional aspects of design such as details of construction and equipment was attributable to his Beaux-Arts training. Among the utilitarian features cited as examples of special competency in problem-solving, the St. Louis Orpheum included a modern ventilating system that washed air, fine acoustics achieved through the architectural treatment of the ceiling as flat domes, and the most up-to-date electrical equipment which provided optimum direct and indirect lighting in the auditorium and on the stage. The structural features of the building received considerable attention in the St. Louis press which hailed the steel frame and concrete building as "indestructible," the "last word in playhouse construction." Rigid tests were applied to determine the load-bearing capacity of every part of the structure and it was reported that the center balcony seats rested on "as secure a foundation as those in the front rows of the parquet." In contrast to older theaters in the city, the Orpheum boasted a spacious auditorium with "95 feet of clear space from the curtain to the back of the front wall" where "not a post or a pillar interrupts the view from any location." Wide aisles and easy access to exits on every floor provided for the comfort as well as the safety of the audience. The Orpheum's canopied metal fire escape was a feature praised in other Lansburgh designs.

Lansburgh's years in France were also credited for his "Parisian touch" in the treatment of facades and interiors such as the St. Louis Orpheum, described as "strongly French in character" with its formal composition of "basement, an order and an attic" enriched with sculpture. The lavish program of ornament on the building was designed by Italian sculptor Leo Lentelli and executed in terra cotta by the Winkle Terra Cotta Co. of St. Louis. Born in Bologna, Lentelli worked in Rome before coming to New York in 1903 where he was assistant to a number of American sculptors. Commissioned to provide ornament for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, Lentelli subsequently taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco from 1913 to 1918. After returning to New York, he taught at the Arts Students' League while continuing private practice. His major work includes sculpture for public libraries, the International Building (Rockefeller Center), the Straus Bank Buildings in Chicago and New York, the Sixteenth Street Bridge, Pittsburgh and statues of Robert E. Lee, Charlottesville, Virginia and Cardinal Gibbons, Washington, D.C. Representative of Lentelli's monumental figural work, the large, expressive figures on the Orpheum facade may relate to the Orpheus theme carried out in low relief lyres; these, together with the extensive use of masks and grotesques appropriately express the building's purpose of public entertainment.

Lansburgh's skillful articulation of the auditorium with circular and curved forms climaxed in the "floating ceiling," a shallow dome illuminated with concealed lights and once embellished with painted stars. Richly fitted with high and low relief sculpture which continued the motifs introduced on the facade, the interior was described as having "generally French detail along approved Parisian lines." The lobby was found by one critic to be a highly successful example of Lansburgh's work, well adapted to terra cotta with its "groined and annular vaulting and shell-shaped tympani". A polychrome mosaic floor further enriched the lobby.

The construction of the Orpheum marked the closing chapter of the vaudeville era in St. Louis. During the 1920s two luxury movie palaces, Loew's State (only part of the lobby remains) and the Ambassador completed the new theater district and by the end of the decade, the Mayfair and Lennox hotels supplied additional lodging. As the growth of motion pictures in audience appeal eventually supplanted the demand for vaudeville, the Orpheum was leased to Warner Brothers as a movie theater in the mid-1930s and later to Loew's Inc. Completely refurbished in 1960, the Orpheum reopened as the American Theater, which has continued to operate as downtown St. Louis' only legitimate theater. Still owned by descendants of the theater's original projector, Louis Cella, the American has been well maintained over the years and its impressive Beaux-Arts facade and interior remain a showpiece of the Central Business District.

Building Description

Located on the southeast corner of Ninth and St. Charles Streets in downtown St. Louis, the American Theater is a three-story steel and concrete theater building constructed in 1917. Designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, the building is faced with buff terra cotta articulated in a Beaux-Arts style.

The primary (west) elevation extends approximately 110 feet along Ninth Street and the north elevation extends approximately 125 feet on St. Charles. The east (rear) and south elevations front on alleys. Faced with buff terra cotta, the primary facade is divided into a three-part composition by a string course between the first and second stories and a heavy ornamental cornice between the second and attic stories. The center bays are given emphasis through a slight projection of the wall plane. Pairs of male and female terra cotta figures holding masks flank the street-level entrances; they once served as atlantes supporting a metal canopy. The center bays of the second story are defined by terra cotta piers embellished with high and low-relief ornament. Three transomed French doors, framed by arch orders open to the mezzanine lobby; flanking the doors are identical figural sculpture groups in terra cotta. The attic story is crowned with an ornamental cornice accented with grotesques. The formal articulation of the primary facade is continued one bay on the St. Charles Street (north) and the south elevations. A one-story balustraded loggia enriched with terra cotta ornament extends six bays along St. Charles Street. The east (rear) elevation is unarticulated and faced with a stucco-like material as are the side elevations. The original metal canopy has been replaced and the vertical marquee once installed on the northwest corner of the building has been removed. The center doorway on the primary facade is now closed-in and heavy metal lintels cap the ground-floor windows flanking the doorways.

The first-floor lobby is entered directly from the street and features a vaulted ceiling faced with buff terra cotta, polychrome terra cotta, ornament in the tympani and frieze and a polychrome mosaic floor. The mezzanine lobby is also enriched with a mosaic floor as well as plaster ornament fashioned into masks and other ornamental motifs. Stairways leading to the upper tiers are marble and brass railings. Consisting of a main floor, mezzanine, and first and second balcony, the auditorium is articulated with circular and curvilinear motifs picked out in ornamental plaster relief moulding. Original brass railing marks the divisions of the mezzanine and balconies. Richly ornamented bands of plaster moulding form the proscenium arch above which is a decorative plaster panel defined by atlantes and climaxing in an elaborate cartouche flanked by seated figures.