Convertible Theater Floor

mbrown3039

Well-Known Member
Came across this venue several years ago in St. George, Utah (just north of the UT/NV border). It's home to the St. George Musical Theater company and, as a historic landmark, it takes a bit of forethought to install anything because any alteration of the facade (even drilling a hole) requires approval from the proper authorities. But, I digress...the most interesting feature in this venue (IMO) is the moving floor. You'll notice in the first picture that the "stage" is at the same floor level as the rest of the venue; in this configuration, the venue would host dinners and meetings and such. When there was need for a traditional, elevated stage space, the floor (where the audience area meets the stage) would be dropped down by the simple turn of a (large) screw (pic #2) and become raked (the hinge point was at the back of the audience area). The floor is permanently level now (by means of the cribbing you see in pic #3), which allows tourists to go underneath to see how it worked. Mike

PS -- as a side note, this venue was built by Mitt Romney's great-grandfather. m
 

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Thie floor "hinges" correct so tilts from level to sloped? Quite a few across the country in old buildings - but a small interest in new build - Nashville snd San Anyonio each have a new convertible.
 
That is so Cool ! Seeing it in that old of a building!
there is a venue in Portland, The Winningstad Theatre, that has several rectangular sections that are on gigantic Acme Screws that do a similar thing, but that facility was built in the 80's-90's. Very cool to see it done in timber framing.

Then there is Gala Systems flagship project:



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At the Paramount in Seattle, not only can the house floor go from flat to raked, but the seats store underneath on tracks. Raise one half of the floor, track the seats out the to the other side, then swap and repeat. It was all supposed to be motorized, but the story I heard was that the company engineering it bellied-up before completion, and just dropped all the parts on the dock. So the tracking seats are manual.

https://www.king5.com/video/news/local/a-tour-of-seattles-paramount-theatre/281-2813600
 
I imagine there were at least 4 screws, one under each beam right? Any linkage to synchronize them?

Two, IIRC (just at the stage end). And no, no way to synchronize them. I figure it was four burly farmers (one on each side of each beam) calling it out manually...M
 

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