The Dynamo Room!

The B. F. Keith’s Theatre in Boston was named after B.F. Keith (the ‘K’ in the future company RKO Pictures, though Keith died over a decade before that company was founded), a New Hampshire showman who struck big in the vaudeville era. Keith has been credited with founding the continuous performance style of programming, at the least he was an early adopter. The Keith’s theatre packed in guests to its huge (especially for the time) auditorium, which provided seating for 3,000 during its existence from 1894-1952.

One aspect of theatres that rarely gets featured is the mechanics, and the Keith’s Theatre had state of the art equipment powering the building.  Thirty-two feet below street level in a sub-cellar resided the Dynamo Room, which featured three Ideal engines powering three 100-kilowatt dynamos that provided the energy for the nearly 5,000 incandescent lights and 40 arc lamps throughout the theatre. Two of the dynamos were operational and one served as backup. The room was staffed by a bevy of finely mustachioed men.

In the back of the Dynamo Room was the switchboard, seen above, that controlled the dynamos, ventilators, pumps for fire service, fans, boiler room, machine shop, among other operations in the theatre.

Also seen is the engine room and what is noted as the cleanest coal fired boiler room one THS researcher has ever seen.

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