Orpheum Theatre - TN Tickets and Seating
Like a number of Orpheum Theatres operating nationwide, this venue is a remodeled movie house from the 1920s. The current Orpheum is actually the second venue to take the name in Memphis. The original Orpheum Theatre was built after the turn of the 20th century, but was decimated by an enormous fire that ran out of control during a striptease act in 1923.
Five years later, a new Orpheum Theatre was built on the site of the blazed vaudeville and burlesque palace. This new building dwarfed the previous venue and added adornments like brocade draperies, a crystal chandelier, decorative molding, and a pipe organ. Even then this building cost a modern fortune to erect, totaling $1.6 million.
As the years passed, the theater survived several bankruptcies, plans for a new office complex on the premises, and the urban flight that left the city of Memphis a ghost town for so long.
The savior for this Orpheum was the Memphis Development Foundation. The foundation purchased the building in 1977 before a new office complex could lead to its demolition and began to bring touring Broadway productions to the city. Five years later the building closed for $5 million worth of renovations.
In January 1984 a remodeled theater opened at 203 South Main Street, a few blocks from the river and the Arkansas-Tennessee border. The Orpheum Theatre has survived and now is one of the most notable destinations for Broadway shows outside of New York.