Marquis Theatre

135 E. Main Street,
Northville, MI 48167

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Trolleyguy
Trolleyguy on March 9, 2021 at 8:17 am

The theatre is permanently closed. It has a new owner and all the interior furnishings are being sold off. Looks like a gut rehab with no plans to do any kind of theatre activities. Check out the website link for info.

mrdoug
mrdoug on June 18, 2011 at 12:01 am

Mr. Lautner is correct, the P&A was built as a movie house (there was once an opera house in Northville as well, but was torn down in the late 50s). I worked in this theater in the early 70s as an usher, when the theater, tho' in only fair shape, still had some of it’s original interior details. To say that the P&A was restored is, in my opinion, incorrect. What the restorers did was to try to make a 20s Renaissance Revival theater Victorian (which, being built in 1925, it never was), and in the process obliterated many of the original 20s details, the gilt stenciled proscenium in particular (it had survived by being covered by a wide screen installed in the 50s or 60s), which they painted over. Also lost were the asbestos curtain and silent movie screen. They added stained stained glass windows where none had existed, and destroyed half of the first and second lobbies to increase the adjoining retail space. Though I’m sure intentions were good and well meant, the interior work you see today is incorrect for the P&A’s original period.

JohnMLauter
JohnMLauter on March 18, 2010 at 12:54 pm

The P&A (as originally built) had a Wurlitzer theater pipe organ built in North Tonawanda, New York (USA), their opus #1205, not Germany as written above. The theatre was not built as an Opera house, it was a common, run of the mill Movie/Vaudeville house very common in the pre-talking picture days. The Wurlitzer was bought and removed in the early 50s by Jack Domer, parts of it are still playing
in a local (Detroit area) home installation. The console is currently for sale by the Detroit Theatre Organ Society, although it has been extensively modified to be a three manual console of unusually ugly proportions and appearance.