{"id":1378,"date":"2025-10-15T10:32:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/1378\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T10:32:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:32:18","slug":"tower-theater-future-unclear-in-upper-darby-pa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/1378\/","title":{"rendered":"Tower Theater future unclear in Upper Darby, Pa."},"content":{"rendered":"

For the better part of a century, it was a cultural icon. Upper Darby<\/a>\u2019s own crown jewel of entertainment, first as a vaudeville and movie theater, and then as a premiere destination for live music of all kinds \u2014 resulting in the legendary status by which it is known. <\/p>\n

Now, the venerable Tower Theater sits mothballed on 69th Street, devoid of the teeming crowds of concertgoers and monumental musicians that made it famous. These days, it\u2019s almost hard to believe the list of heavy-hitters that made the trek to Delaware County<\/a> to play there.<\/p>\n

David Bowie \u2014 check<\/a>. Bruce Springsteen<\/a>? Of course<\/a>. The Rolling Stones<\/a>, the Replacements<\/a>, The Grateful Dead<\/a>. Ozzy Osbourne, too<\/a> \u2014 and Bob Marley<\/a>. Many of them more than once, along with almost countless others<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And yet, the venue looks to have gone out with a whimper, an interactive Vincent van Gogh art exhibit<\/a> serving as its last live event in 2021 and 2022. Since then, the Tower has sat dormant.<\/p>\n

So, three years into the Tower\u2019s abeyance, what is happening with such a historic venue? That\u2019s what one reader asked via Curious Philly<\/a>, The Inquirer\u2019s forum for questions on all things local.<\/p>\n

\u00bb ASK US: Have something you\u2019re wondering about the Philly region? Submit your Curious Philly question here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Mum\u2019s the word<\/p>\n

At this stage, it appears the Tower\u2019s fate has not been determined. Live Nation, the venue\u2019s owner, had no updates to share at this time. And Upper Darby Township officials did not respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n

The township\u2019s council, however, did discuss the Tower at a February meeting<\/a>. There, Rita LaRue, Upper Darby\u2019s director of Community and Economic Development, said the township has been in touch with Live Nation \u201cover the past few years,\u201d and had been in talks ahead of the \u201cVan Gogh: The Immersive Experience\u201d exhibit<\/a> regarding a partnership or acquisition to keep the Tower open.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter they had the Van Gogh exhibit, they decided to close it for a while as they ascertained their other properties in the area,\u201d LaRue said in February. She added that she continues to speak to the venue\u2019s ownership roughly monthly about its future. <\/p>\n

Upper Darby also worked with the Urban Land Institute to conduct a study known as \u201cDestination: Downtown Upper Darby,\u201d<\/a> which brought in experts to determine how it could develop its downtown district. A panel visited the area in April, and among their focuses was the Tower, which was \u201cidentified as one of several anchors,\u201dsaid the institute\u2019s Philadelphia executive director, Kevin Moran.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The] panel recommended Upper Darby Township prioritize returning the Tower Theater as an entertainment destination long-term, with several short-term activation ideas also offered,\u201d Moran said. A publicly released report on the institute\u2019s findings is forthcoming.<\/p>\n

An \u2018unquestionable smash\u2019<\/p>\n

Moran\u2019s description is an apt one. Opened in 1928, the Tower Theater arrived by way of real estate developer John H. McClatchy, who was a driving force behind developing the 69th and Market area<\/a> from what was then farmland into a bustling commercial district.<\/p>\n

The Tower was designed as the neighborhood\u2019s Art Deco linchpin. On its roof, McClatchy added a radio towerlike spire that, though never functional, served as a symbol of modernity and landmark architectural feature, The Inquirer reported in 2019<\/a>. <\/p>\n

For decades, the Tower stuck to movies and vaudeville acts, and hosted performances by jazz greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the 1950s. It also served as something of a community touchstone, with classes from Upper Darby High School holding their graduation ceremonies there over the years, according to early Inquirer reports.<\/p>\n

But in the 1970s, it started on the road to becoming the music venue giant it is remembered as today, thanks to promoter Rick Green, who began booking rock shows there under his Midnight Sun Concerts banner<\/a>. The first came on June 14, 1972, with Dave Mason and Buzzy Linhart\u2019s inaugural performance coming off as an \u201cunquestionable smash,\u201d as former Daily News music critic Jonathan Takiff wrote at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Midnight Sun booked Tower shows until 1975<\/a>, putting on about 120 concerts in total, according to an Inquirer report from the time. That year, the Tower\u2019s then-owner, the A.M. Ellis theater chain, sold the venue to Midnight Sun\u2019s much-larger competitor<\/a>, local music impresario Larry Magid\u2019s Electric Factory Concerts, which would helm the venue\u2019s promotions for decades.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s reign at the Tower started with a December 1975 Hall and Oates show that not only broke a house attendance record, but marked the first live radio broadcast from the theater at WMMR, The Inquirer reported<\/a>. That reign lasted until the turn of the millennium, when Electric Factory Concerts was sold to SFX Entertainment<\/a>, which itself was then sold to Clear Channel Communications, which later spun off its concert division<\/a> as Live Nation.<\/p>\n

The towerless Tower<\/p>\n

August 2019 marked something of a symbolic blow, with the removal of the iconic<\/a> tower from the venue\u2019s roof. The aging spire had deteriorated significantly in its 90-plus years, and became a threat to public safety, prompting its dismantling, company and township officials said at the time. The sphere that sat atop the tower was donated to the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project museum in Montgomery County<\/a>, according to an Inquirer report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite calls for a new tower to be erected on the Tower, it never came. After the pandemic hit in early 2020, shows at the venue trickled ultimately to a stop, and never returned following the closure of the Van Gogh exhibit in 2022.<\/p>\n

Now, in 2025, it feels like the more things change, the more they stay the same. On the night the Tower held its first rock concert in 1972, former owner A.M. Ellis\u2019s general manager, Ben Zimmerman, had some words that today feel prophetic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tower was never meant to be a movie theater,\u201d Zimmerman told The Inquirer<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that these rock shows are a shot in the arm \u2026 to bring back the old glory here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the better part of a century, it was a cultural icon. Upper Darby\u2019s own crown jewel of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1392,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-tower-theater-plans-history-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}