Shea's Performing Arts Center (1926)

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With the popular rise of movie palaces and nickelodeons in the early twentieth century, public entertainment establishments, like Shea’s, vied with one other to create the most opulent and theatrical venues for their patrons.  Buffalo was home to numerous entertainment establishments throughout the first half of the twentieth century, all of them emulating (to some degree) the emphasis on spectacle seen in Garnier’s Paris Opera House; venues, like the early shopping districts and covered markets, to which people came, not only to see, but also to be seen, and Shea’s is no exception.  Today, Shea’s is the last of these magnificent pleasure palaces standing in Buffalo, but a visit to this incredible performing arts center provides a window into a period when the show was only part of the entertainment, and the venue was as much a stage as that on which the official performers plied their trade. 

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