The year the city saved its palace: the Embassy, 1972

1928 - 1975

The palace: The Embassy opened on 14 May 1928 as the Emboyd Theatre, a movie palace and vaudeville house designed by A. M. Strauss and John Eberson for operator Clyde Quimby, wrapped by the seven-story Indiana Hotel and home to the Grande Page pipe organ, Miss Page, of more than 1,000 pipes. Sold with the hotel to the Alliance Amusement Corporation in 1952, it took the name Embassy and ran on as a movie palace while downtown's other theatres fell one by one. The building's fabric and film history stand in THEATRES and FILM. The cultural event of its life came when it was nearly over.

The rescue: The Indiana Hotel closed in 1971, and a proposal followed to demolish the theatre for a parking lot of 65 cars. In 1972 a handful of community leaders and volunteers led by Robert Goldstine formed the Embassy Theatre Foundation to protect the building and the organ. The Save the Embassy campaign had to raise $250,000, and it made the sum with just two days to spare. Volunteers then kept the building alive by hand, feeding coal bought with their own money into the furnaces so the organ's pipes would not freeze. In May 1975 organist Buddy Nolan played a benefit concert that filled the house, and later that year the Embassy was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and reopened as a performing arts centre. The rescue is the template of Fort Wayne's cultural character, the same civic reflex that had federated the arts in 1955, now applied to a single building under a deadline: when the market priced the city's culture as a parking lot, the city bought it back itself.

Sources:

1. Embassy Theatre Foundation, Our History (the Emboyd's opening of 14 May 1928; Strauss and Eberson; the 1952 Alliance sale and the Embassy name; the 1972 foundation under Robert Goldstine; the $250,000 raised with two days to spare; the National Register listing of 1975).
2. Central Indiana Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society, Embassy Theatre: Fort Wayne (the Foundation's own history as carried by CICATOS: the volunteer furnace crews feeding coal bought with their own money; Buddy Nolan's May 1975 benefit concert filling the house).
3. Midwest Guest, For the love of Miss Page (14 October 2014: the 1971 hotel closure; the parking lot proposal for 65 cars; the $250,000 in 1972 dollars; the 1975 reopening).