How does a large pipe organ manage to just disappear?
It wasn’t quite magic, but it was one of a a few quirky things to happen at the Byrd Theatre in its lifetime.
When the Byrd Theater opened at 4720 Baltimore Ave in 1928, with a capacity of 1,800 seats, the Glazer directory reports that it had “trouble getting product” from the beginning, and, despite an acknowledgement from Admiral Byrd, displayed in the lobby, it never was successful. Glazer attributed this to the fact that they always had a hard time getting first-run films, but perhaps there was more to it: the Byrd seemed to have more than its share of strange events.
One of the Byrd Theatre’s happier occasions occurred in 1933 when nearby St. Francis de Sales Church (47th and Springfield) held a fundraiser there, to a standing-room-only crowd (https://sfdshistory.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/parish-night-at-the-byrd/ ) The event included an organ recital on the theatre’s Gottfriedson organ — a shining moment for the massive movie theater pipe organ, which had become obsolete with the advent of “talkies” soon after the theater opened.
Something that large can become so much a part of the furnishings that you forget its existence, but on March 15, 1941, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Oscar Forman, the theatre manager, suddenly noticed that the Byrd’s organ was gone! Bemused police detectives confirmed that it was, indeed, missing from the premises, and quickly located and arrested the thieves: the usher, Allen Goodwin, of 30th St. near Tasker; and two seventeen-year-olds: Robert Lewis of Baltimore Ave. near 48th St,; and Lewis Roberts, of 51st St. near Baltimore Ave., who confessed to having secretly removed the organ, pipe by pipe, over a period of four months, The operator of a junkyard at 49th and Paschall was also arrested after he admitted that “he paid $36.40 to Goodwin for 924 pounds of lead, zinc, and brass chimes.” The organ was not the only thing stolen: the detectives also discovered that Forman’s local manager, Harold Sands of 44th Street near Parrish, had transported “two lamps, a rug and two rug pads – out of the theatre lobby down to Goodwin’s house, where the detectives reported finding them.” The news article, which is just a little bit snarky, ends: “Mr Forman gazed with a satisfied air at the theatre as he drove home last night. ‘Look,’ he murmured to himself, ‘the building’s still there.’” And so it was, for a few more decades.
Theatre organs were, apparently, a target. The Inquirer reported another incident in the neighbourhood on August 19 of the same year, when a group of seven boys were arrested for stealing “parts of a $6000 pipe organ piece by piece from the closed Baltimore Theatre, 5024 Baltimore Ave.” The piled-up pipes were found in one of the boys’ back yards by detective Albert Jones – the same detective who discovered the Byrd thieves – when he and his partner “went to question two youngsters who recently had been found driving automobiles around a used car lot at 45th Street and Baltimore Ave. After being arrested, these two implicated five others” all unnamed in the newspaper, so it is unclear whether any of them had also been involved in the Byrd theft. Glaser notes that just a few years later, many theatres would voluntarily give up their outdated organs to scrap metal drives for the war effort.
Apparently, there were some rough elements in the neighbourhood in the 1940s: in January 1945, the Inquirer reported a stabbing incident at the Byrd, when two youths got into an argument, and one pulled out a “penknife” and “lunged” at the other. Paul Stokes, age 15, of 4242 Spruce Street, wound up in Philadelphia General Hospital and his friend was arrested for “aggravated assault and battery and turned over to Juvenile Court Authorities.”
Not all incidents at the Byrd were violent. In 1946, the 75-year-old ticket taker collapsed suddenly at the theatre and was rushed to Misericordia Hospital, where he died of a heart attack. His wasn’t the only sudden death: in 1948, Joseph Friell, age 36, of 4619 Chester, took his seven-year-old daughter to the 3 PM matinee as a treat, after she recovered from flu. At the end of the show, the girl could not wake her father, in the seat beside her, so she found the manager, who “went down the aisle, looked, led blonde little Patricia to an usher, and called police. Police took Patricia and her father in an emergency wagon to Misericordia Hospital,” where he was pronounced dead of a heart attack.
Business was not, perhaps, as good as it might have been at the Byrd in the 1950s, so manager Robert Hanover, tried something new: in 1953, he began to advertise “The Eyes of the World Focus on Photorama. Photorama is Movie Magic: a magnificent spectacle bringing a viewer thrills never before experienced…New dimensions in vision with multiple sound. No special glasses needed – you see it – naturally.” The “magniificent 50-foot screen” was billed as “the largest curved screen in Penna.” and was used for showing “Mutiny on the Bounty”, “Peter Pan,” and “The Quiet Man,” among other films.
Thieves tried to break into two safes at the Byrd in 1955, but were frightened off by the arrival of the janitor, who noticed candy strewn on the floor in front of the vending machine. Then owner Robert Hanover (who lived at 4035 Spruce Street), told the police the two safes had been empty and none of the money was missing from the candy machine. Perhaps this was the final straw for Hanover, who bought two bakeries in South Philadelphia and became president of the South 4th Street Business Men’s Association until he died in 1958.
In 1970, the Byrd property was sold to the Philadelphia department of Public Property, to be used as a parking lot (as it is still today); by that time, the theatre had already been closed for twelve years.
Perhaps the Byrd’s odd fortunes were related to its choice of namesake, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, whose career had its own share of “maybes” — especially around the time the theaatre opened. Wikipedia reports that Admiral Byrd is “one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the United States Navy.” However, in 1926, after Byrd had become a national hero and received the Medal of Honor for claiming to have flown over the North Pole, doubts began to surface about whether he falsified his instrument readings — the truth is still uncertain. In 1927, Byrd received backing from the American Trans-Oceanic Company — owned by Philadelphia department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker (son of John Wanamaker) — his Philadelphia connection — to attempt the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight; his start was delayed by a plane repair, and Charles Lindbergh beat him to the record by several days. Around the time the Byrd Theatre opened in 1928, Byrd was on the first of a series of expeditions to the Antarctic on his flagship, the City of New York — which had previously been named the Samson, and was infamous for possibly being the ship that failed to come to the aid of the Titanic back in 1912!
Street of History Philadelphia 
Amazing blog 🐱🐱🐱
LikeLike