The Tower Theatre Organ
A Digital Humanities 150 Project
The Broadway District of Los Angeles, California, has a rich and intriguing history. Each theatre has its own story, beginning from its architecture, to its use, and often to its eventual disuse. In this project, we studied a specific part of a specific theatre: the organ of the Tower Theatre.
The Tower Theatre, opened in 1927 and designed by S. Charles Lee, was used until its closure in 1988. From then, its lobby was leased to various vendors for use until 2015, when it was leased by Apple and renovated to become an Apple store in the Historic Broadway District.
Our project was concerned with specifically the organ in the Tower Theatre. Our original interest in the organ sprung from wondering how it worked: the two organ rooms confused us, as did the elevator room, and the function of the organ itself. From here, we studied organs in general, the architecture of the Tower Theatre, and contacted various experts in organs and historic theatres.
Our research goals included accomplishing the following from a digital humanities standpoint:
- Finding out more about the organ and the console.
- Understanding how a theatre organ worked.
- Understanding the rooms in the Tower Theatre and how they corresponded to the functioning of the organ.
- Researching what happened to the organ, where it was moved to, and how it disappeared.
Special thanks to our professor Anthony Caldwell, LA theatre history expert Bill Counter, and organ expert Mark Herman.
Class Description
Digital Humanities 150 introduces students to 3D modeling techniques in the field of cultural heritage conservation. Using the S. Charles Lee Papers (1919-1962) located in the UCLA Young Research Library Special Collections as a reference, students will, through in-depth archival research, 3D modeling, and augmented reality (AR.), investigate how two of the most significant theatres located in Los Angeles’s historic Broadway theatre district were constructed, decorated, and used.
The final project has students in groups investigate how the historic theatres in Downtown LA were designed, constructed, decorated, and used through archival research. This research is demonstrated through 3D, photogrammetric, and AR models.
