Fox Theatre

The Fox Theatre is a performing arts center located at 2211 Woodward Avenue in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, situated near the Grand Circus Park Historic District. Originally billed as "the most magnificent Temple of Amusement in the World," the Fox has welcomed countless audiences to films and performances of all kinds since opening in 1928. With 5,048 seats — or 5,174 if removable seats placed in the raised orchestra pit are included — it is the largest surviving movie palace of the 1920s and the largest of the original Fox Theatres. Designed by theater architect C. Howard Crane, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989 for its architecture. Today the Fox remains one of Detroit's most celebrated cultural institutions, anchoring a stretch of Woodward Avenue that has been the beating heart of the city's entertainment scene for nearly a century.

Origins and Construction

The Detroit Fox was built to replace the Fox Washington Theatre near Grand Circus Park, which was deemed too outdated and small at 1,862 seats. It was decided that Detroit's wealth and glamour from the rise of the auto industry necessitated a Fox palace of its own, and film mogul William Fox commissioned theater master C. Howard Crane to build the current Fox Theatre just up the road from the Washington. The old Fox Washington was closed on June 3, 1928, and knocked down shortly thereafter.

The Fox Theatre was designed by architect Charles Howard Crane, a Detroiter who had once worked for Albert Kahn. Crane was also responsible for Orchestra Hall (1919), the Capitol on Broadway (1922) and the State on Woodward (1925), and designed more than 250 movie houses across Canada and the United States. By 1928, Crane considered the Fox his best effort.

The Detroit Fox is one of five flagship Fox Theatres built in the late 1920s by film pioneer William Fox. The others were the Fox Theatres in Brooklyn, Atlanta, St. Louis, and San Francisco. William Fox, son of Hungarian immigrant parents, had a rags-to-riches career. Turned down around the turn of the century for a $3 raise from his $17-a-week job as a pants presser on New York's East Side, Fox took his savings and bought a down-at-the-heels Brooklyn nickelodeon, eventually rising to rule a cinema kingdom that included Detroit's Fox Theatre. A few months after the stock market crash of 1929, he lost controlling interest in the Fox Films Corp.

Architecture and Interior Design

Built for William Fox and the Fox Theatre chain, the Detroit Fox is the largest and most exotic eclectic Hindu-Siamese-Byzantine theater of the golden age of the movie palace, a period spanning roughly 1925 to 1930. Architect C. Howard Crane designed the Fox with an "exotic" interior appropriating Burmese, Chinese, Indian and Persian motifs. There are three levels of seating — the Main Floor above the orchestra pit, the Mezzanine, and the Gallery (balcony) — while the exterior of the attached 10-story office building features a façade with Asian motifs which, when illuminated at night, can be seen for several blocks.

After entering through a bank of elegant brass doors and an outer foyer, guests pass into an ornate 3,600-square-foot, six-story-high lobby decorated with butterflies, lions, and peacocks. Beyond this is the elaborate main auditorium, which seats 5,000 and is ringed by a pillared promenade. The oval-shaped main auditorium is surrounded by cusped, Islamic-inspired arches that conceal over 2,700 pipes for the original pipe organ. Decorative gilded plaster elephants, griffins, dragons, pagodas, deities, serpents, eagles, and Hindu goddesses cover the base of the columns and virtually every inch of wall space, while a two-thousand-pound, 13-foot-diameter chandelier with twelve hundred pieces of glass hangs from a large tent-like dome suspended in the center of the auditorium ceiling.

The Fox has two organs: a 4-manual, 36-rank Wurlitzer in the auditorium and a 3-manual, 13-rank Moller organ in the lobby. In addition to the main auditorium, the Fox Theatre features foyers, lobbies, stage facilities, eight dressing rooms, a broadcasting booth, a screening room, an infirmary, and a music library. The Fox Theatre was the first to include escalators and elevators for patrons and the first in the world to have custom, built-in equipment for presenting talking movies.

The Fox Office Building, which forms the Woodward façade of the theatre, is 10 stories in height. The front and sides of the office tower are faced with cream-colored terra cotta, and there are decorative lintels above the windows on the second and tenth floors. In 2006, a dramatic rooftop tower sign was added: on January 12, 2006, Atanas Ilitch of Ilitch Holdings announced the addition of a tower sign on the roof of the Fox, which was completed and dedicated on January 30, 2006. The multistory tower features 18-foot letters spelling out "FOX" on four sides, topped by a dodecahedron star, with a computer-controlled LED light system capable of displaying many lighting colors to reflect holidays, seasons, and special events.

Opening Night and the Early Decades

When the opening-night curtain rose at Detroit's Fox Theatre on September 21, 1928, an audience of 5,000 invited guests came to 2211 Woodward Avenue to see what had been billed as a "Temple of Amusement." The inaugural performance opened with the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by the 60-musician-strong Fox Theatre Grand Orchestra as they rose dramatically into view on the elevator platform. On stage, the inaugural production, "The Evolution of Transportation," depicted the progress of Detroit from Indian days to the present utilizing a troupe of 32 dancing girls called the Tillerettes and a choir of 50 voices. This performance was followed by a Fox Movietone newsreel with sound, and then the feature film Street Angel, starring Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor.

The original "house staff" of doormen, ushers, designers, and matrons numbered more than 400. The Fox Theatre was also the first to include escalators and elevators for patrons and the first in the world to have custom, built-in equipment for presenting talking movies. Between featured films, the Fox's troupe of chorus girls would entertain the audience, and live shows ranged from the Benny Goodman Big Band to Berry Gordy's annual Motown Revue.

During World War II, like many theaters in the area, the Fox operated 24 hours a day to accommodate defense plant workers on afternoon and evening shifts, and routinely grossed $75,000 a week when admission was 35 cents. In 1953, the theater was the first in Michigan equipped for CinemaScope and premiered the epic picture The Robe. In 1956, the theatre hosted three performances by Elvis Presley, and in the 1960s and 1970s began to show a number of horror and kung-fu type movies.

Decline, Restoration, and the Ilitch Era

During the 1960s, the theater hosted performances by many Motown recording artists, but by the 1970s the theater was showing its age. Unlike other downtown Detroit theaters in the 1970s, such as the Michigan and United Artists, the Fox was able to remain open by programming Blaxploitation and martial arts films. By the 1970s, mezzanine and balcony seating areas were closed to the public.

In 1984, Chuck Forbes, owner of the State and Gem theaters, proposed a renovation project. These plans were never fully realized, but in 1988 the theater was acquired by new owners, Mike and Marian Ilitch, who fully restored the Fox at a cost of $12 million. The restoration took 18 months and returned the theater to its original grandeur, including the construction of a new multistory marquee to replace the badly altered original. Their company, Ilitch Holdings, Inc., is headquartered in the Fox Theater Office Building.

The first production at the Fox after restoration was a November 19, 1988 concert with Joe Williams and the Count Basie Orchestra. Notable early post-restoration performances include a concert with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Liza Minnelli, which was recorded and broadcast on the Showtime cable network in 1989, and a 1990 performance by Victor Borge which was recorded for broadcast on PBS.

The area surrounding the Fox is nicknamed Foxtown. In 2000, Comerica Park opened and helped to revitalize the neighborhood, along with the construction of Ford Field in 2002 and Little Caesars Arena in 2017.

Notable Performances and Events

The Fox Theatre has served as a stage for an extraordinary range of performances and public events across its history. Detroit's Fox Theatre has hosted a roster of Michigan-connected musicians including Aretha Franklin in 1994 and 2012, The Temptations in 1988, Stevie Wonder in 1969, The Spinners in 1977, Smokey Robinson in 1988, Diana Ross in 1990, Alice Cooper in 1990, Iggy Pop and The Stooges in 2007, Kid Rock in 2012, Jack White in 2014, and Greta Van Fleet in 2018. Chris Cornell of Soundgarden played his final show at the Fox on May 17, 2017.

On July 30 and 31, 2019, the theatre was the site of a two-night primary debate among the announced candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential race. The theater also hosted the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony on March 31, 2007, the night before WrestleMania 23 was held at nearby Ford Field.

Today the Fox Theatre serves as a hub for live performances, hosting fine art evenings, comedy shows, children's shows, and nationally touring artists, as well as spring and winter musical productions.

Historic Designations

The Fox Theatre Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1989. On June 29, 1989, the Fox Theatre was formally designated a National Historic Landmark. These designations recognize both the architectural significance of the building and its place in the cultural fabric of Detroit and the nation. Money allocated to the building as a result of its National Historic Landmark status helps pay for any future repairs or restoration projects to keep the building functioning as it should.

Detroit's Fox Theatre remains one of the largest and most ornate theatres in the country. The venue has also earned recognition from the concert industry: Pollstar named the Fox Theatre the #1 theatre in North America.