Lamb, Thomas White

Lamb, Thomas White

(1871–1942)Lamb achieved recognition as one of the leading architects of the boom in movie theater construction of the 1910s and 1920s. Particularly associated with the Fox Theatres, Loew’s Theatres, and Keith-Albee chains of vaudeville and film theaters, known as “movie palaces,” as showcases for the films of the emerging Hollywood studios. His first theater design was the City Theatre, built in NYC in 1909 for film mogul William Fox. The 1914 Mark Strand Theatre, the 1916 Rialto Theatre, and the 1917 Rivoli Theatre, all in New York’s Times Square, set the template for what would become the American movie palace. Among his most notable are 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 B.F. Keith Memorial Theatre in Boston, MA (1928), now the Boston Opera House; Warner’s Hollywood Theatre (1930) in NYC, now a church; and the Loew’s Ohio Theatre (1928) in Columbus, OH. Lamb designed, with Joseph Urban, New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre, as well as the third Madison Square Garden (1925) and the Paramount Hotel in mid-town Manhattan.