Variety Store Building and Theatre

Built in 1927 on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, this two-story brick, steel and concrete building combines ten storefronts, twelve second-floor apartments and a 1900-seat theater. Entrepreneurs Sam Stecker, Meyer Fine and Abe Kramer commissioned it, and architect Nicola Petti, who designed at least four other Cleveland theaters, planned it. The theater showed films and vaudeville from its opening and was considered among the city's finest. Its lobby has an arched plaster ceiling, a giant semi-elliptical window and the original cut-glass chandelier. The auditorium seats 1550 on the main floor and 350 in the balcony. Warner Brothers bought the property in 1929, and Wargo Realty acquired it in 1954. Although the commercial fronts are not architecturally distinguished, the theater is a well-preserved example of the restrained classical approach to 1920s movie houses. Several comparable West Side theaters, including the Granada, Lyric and Tivoli, have been demolished, which makes this building a rare survivor and a record of neighborhood commercial life before widespread automobile use.