Fox Theatre (St. Louis)

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Fox Theatre (St. Louis)
The Fox Theatre, St Louis
Location	527 N. Grand Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri  United States
Type	Concert venue
Opened	1929
Renovated	1982
Website	Fox Theatre website "The Fabulous Fox"

The Fox Theatre is one of the most famous theatres in St. Louis, Missouri. "The Fabulous Fox" or "The Fox", as locals call it, is located in the arts district of the Grand Center area in Midtown St. Louis, one block north of Saint Louis University. It was designed in the 1920s by an architect specializing in theaters, C. Howard Crane in a style known as Siamese Byzantine. Originally opened in 1929 by William Fox as a movie palace for silent films, the Fox has survived through the years, and is now a versatile theater. The Fox Theatre closed in March of 1978 and was purchased by Fox Associates in 1981. The theater was restored at a price of at least $3 million dollars and in comparison, the Fox cost $6 million dollars to build in 1929. The Fox reopened in September 1982 with the musical Barnum.

The Fox currently seats 4,278 theatergoers plus 234 in the private Fox Club.

In September 2007, the venue celebrated 25 years since its re-opening with a concert featuring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Linda Eder and a day where the theatre showed movies in a throwback to its beginnings.^[1]

[edit] Notable events

The theatre hosted a sixtieth birthday concert for St. Louis born, early rock and roll pioneer, Chuck Berry in 1987. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones was the project's musical director and backing band leader. Taylor Hackford incorporated the concert into a documentary film about Berry and released the film as Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll as a feature. In the film, Berry mentions that as a child growing up in St. Louis he was denied entrance to the Fox to watch a film because he was African-American.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Fox Theatre official website