Picture the Weinberg Center for the Arts, a 1,143-seat theater building here in Frederick, Maryland. Step closer and you can imagine its life: it presents music, theater, films, studio screenings, conventions, weddings, business meetings, television and commercial location shoots, and visual arts. It began as the Tivoli Theatre, built by the Stanley-Crandall Company and opened on December 23, 1926; for nearly fifty years it was Frederick’s premiere movie theatre.
After considerable damage in a 1976 flood the house closed, and the Weinberg family, which then owned the old movie palace, presented it to the city as a gift rather than try to keep it operating as a movie house. Since then it has been maintained in the splendid style of 1926, a living moment of that era. Inside, the theatre still houses a two-manual, eight-rank Wurlitzer organ — the only original theatre organ installation in the state.
Today the Weinberg Center holds several dozen events every year and runs on an annual budget of one million dollars. Every period detail on this building still speaks of 1926 and the audiences who once filled its 1,143 seats.