Photograph & description courtesy Tacoma Public Library and Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society.

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Uploaded on: May 9, 2023

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Photograph & description courtesy Tacoma Public Library and Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society.

“In the era of silent films, nearly all of Tacoma’s theaters, from the small neighborhood venues to the large downtown gathering spaces, contained organs to provide musical backdrop for the show on the screen. Here, we see the three-manual Robert Morton theater pipe organ that was installed at the Broadway Theater in the mid-1920s. In the 1930s, it would change its name to the Music Box. This historic theater, built in 1890 as the Tacoma, occupied the space on the 9th Street Hill at Broadway between the Pantages and the Rialto, until it was lost to fire in 1963. Esther Stayner, who played the organ in the 1920s, and Gunnar Anderson, who followed her in the early 1930s, are pictured here at the organ.”