NEW YORK—First opened as a movie theater in 1929, the 2,800 seat Beacon Theatre on upper Broadway is now known primarily as a concert hall; and will reopen this weekend with a concert by Queens native Paul Simon after a seven month, $16 million renovation.
MSG Entertainment, who also owns Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Gardens, took over the Beacon in 2006, and initiated the renovation.
“The architectural challenge here was both to do archival research as well as field research, so we spent a lot of time looking at old newspaper stories, advertisements from decorators, as well as looking at the walls and scraping away the paint and trying to figure out what the original color pallet was of the theater,” said project manager Marc Tarozzi.
The theater was landmarked in 1979, and is a sort of patchwork of design elements from Greek, Roman, Renaissance, and Rococo styles.
The aging seats, beer stained after countless Allman Brothers concerts, have been replaced, the main box office kiosk on Broadway has been restored, murals and brass and gilded architectural details have been uncovered and restored and some architectural details, long covered over by shoddy earlier attempts at renovations have been revealed.
Additionally, the Beacon’s electrical system has been completely rewired, and new draperies with gold tassels have been installed.
