By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The original Lafayette Square Theatre, on the northeast corner of Lafayette Square at Washington and Broadway, was built in 1901. It held 1,600 people in balcony seats – there was no gallery. It was devoted “entirely to the burlesque” when it was opened, although by 1916, it was hosting baseball fans when the Bisons were out of town.
A “paragon playograph” was set up on the stage, and allowed baseball fans to follow the action via ticker tape in the days before radio and television broadcasts.
Next door, the New Lyric Theater opened in 1913 – only to be taken down in 1921 to build what was Buffalo’s largest theater, the massive Lafayette Theatre.
Originally built for both motion pictures and vaudeville, when it opened in 1922, the Lafayette boasted the most seats and the largest sign in Buffalo.
“The brilliancy in the front of the theater will fairly startle the eye when the myriad of lights are turned on in the gorgeous signs which bedeck the front of Buffalo’s largest, newest, and most beautiful playhouse,” gushed The Buffalo Times when the theater opened in the new Lafayette Square Building.
The Lafayette was the first to bring sound to Buffalo movies with Vitaphone technology in 1927. The Vitaphone apparatus weighed 12 tons and took four weeks to install. Buffalo’s Willis Carrier, the inventor of modern air conditioning, was there when the building’s original “airwashing” equipment was replaced with newer equipment in 1936.
The Basil family took over the operation of the Lafayette in 1943 and renovated the theater, adding new comforts and an updated marquee.
At the time, it was one of the largest real estate transactions in downtown history when Benderson Development bought the theater to raze it for a 100-car parking lot in 1962. Benderson offered the organ and theater seats to “any qualified charitable organization or institution whose request seems justifiable.”
The rest of the Lafayette Square Building came down in the early 1970s, and the location has been a parking lot ever since.
