Preserving the Past at the Civic Theatre, Allentown
Many thanks to Beth Massa of the Civic Theatre, Allentown, Pennsylvania for this guest post about their efforts to preserve their theatre's history. Do you have a story to tell about your theatre? We'd love to hear from you!
First handbill for the Civic Little Theatre, 1927
The Civic Theatre was founded in 1927 by two local newspaper reporters in response to the then-current national Little Theatre movement. Located in Allentown, PA, the Civic Little Theatre (CLT), as it was then called, found success from its very first production. Over the years the organization struggled to find a permanent home, moving from shared attic space to an unheated building on the city’s fairgrounds to a vacated movie theater to a local high school auditorium to a local college stage. Finally, in 1957, CLT moved into its current home at the Nineteenth Street Theatre, a 1928 Art Deco movie palace in Allentown’s West End. In the last decade, capital improvements to the theatre...