Theatre Architects

Here you can find out about the architect firms and individual architects associated with the theatres featured on this website.

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Thomas W. Lamb

Born: 1871 (Dundee, Scotland)

Died: 1942 (New York, New York)

Thomas Lamb was a Scottish-born American architect, noted as one of the foremost designers of theatres and cinemas in the 20th century.

Lamb was born in Dundee, Scotland and came to the United States at the age of 12. He studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York and initially worked for the City of New York as an inspector.

Lamb achieved recognition as one of the leading architects of the boom in movie theatre construction of the 1910s and 1920s. Particularly associated with Fox Theatres, Loew’s Theatres, and the Keith-Albee chains of vaudeville and film theatres, Lamb was instrumental in establishing and developing the design and construction of the large, lavishly decorated theatres, known as “movie palaces”, as showcases for the films from the emerging Hollywood studios.

Lamb’s designs for the 1914 Mark Strand Theatre, the 1916 Rialto Theatre, and the 1917 Rivoli Theatre, all in Times Square in New York City, set the template for what would become the American movie palace.

Among Lamb’s most notable theatres were the 1929 Fox Theatre in San Francisco and the 1919 Capitol Theatre in New York, both now demolished. Among his most noted designs that have been preserved and restored are the 1928 B.F. Keith Memorial Theatre in Boston (now the Boston Opera House), Warner’s Hollywood Theatre (1930) in New York (now the Times Square Church), the Hippodrome Theatre (1914) in Baltimore, and the Loew’s Ohio Theatre (1928) in Columbus, Ohio. Among Lamb’s existing Canadian theatres are the 1920 Pantages Theatre in Toronto (now the Ed Mirvish Theatre) and the double-decker Elgin and Winter Garden theatres.

Aside from movie theatres, Lamb is noted for designing (with Joseph Urban) New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre, a legitimate theatre, as well as the third Madison Square Garden and the Paramount Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

Lamb died in 1942 in New York City at the age of 71. His architectural archive is held by the Drawings and Archives Department of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.

Information in part sourced from Wikipedia .