Restoring a marquee’s glow

[Erik Sine]

Restoring a marquee’s glow

By Barbara O’Brien

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Updated: July 20, 2009, 7:28 AM

The marquee at the Palace Theater in Hamburg is repaired by Mike Golubski as

Flexlume Signs, which erected it, has been tasked with bringing it back to life

with help from a state grant.

Harry Scull Jr. / Buffalo News

It has been about 70 years since Flexlume Signs erected the marquee at the Palace Theater in Hamburg, so it’s about time for an update.

The longtime Buffalo company has the contract for the restoration of its original work, and while employees were looking for electrical wires under the sign, they found traces of lights that had been covered with siding.

The chaser lights are a bit of old-time movie glitter that theater owner Jay Ruof hopes to bring back — if he can secure another grant.

The restoration of the sign is one of many facade-improvement projects being undertaken in Hamburg through a state grant program.

“It will certainly enhance the streetscape and bring back that sense of time when those theaters were big,” said village special projects coordinator Paul Becker.

The theater was built in 1926, and Flexlume owner Paddy Rowell Sr. thinks the marquee work was completed about 1939 or 1940. The company closed its doors at the start of World War II when manufacturing turned toward the war effort. Rowell’s father, F. A. Rowell, took over the business in 1943.

The recent work brings back celluloid memories for Paddy Rowell, who grew up in Hamburg.

“We used to go to that show a lot,” he said.

His Buffalo company has crafted new rose pink and fluorescent green neon tubes for the sign as part of the matching grant program through the state Division of Community Renewal. The cost of the work is estimated at $22,000, and the grant is for $10,000, Becker said.

“We’re manufacturing all new neon, so the marquee probably will look like it did in the beginning,” Rowell said.

Ruof, who bought the theater in 2008, said the facade-improvement program came along just about the time he was making the investment in the theater. He signed on to the program, because he figured that he would never be able to do the work on his own.

But then he put it off because it was an extra expense when he was trying to build his business. To be eligible for the grant, the work must be completed by this fall, so Flexlume got to work this summer.

With the discovery of the additional lights to be restored, Ruof is hoping that another grant will help him pay for the extra work.

When workers were peeling back the siding on the soffit to get access to wires, they discovered the remnants of chaser lights in circular patterns that had been covered up for years.

“They found this pattern of light sockets that form a path,” Ruof said.

The lights once illuminated the sidewalk on Buffalo Street, their twinkling having enhanced the theater experience.

Ruof wants Flexlume to restore the clear incandescent chaser lights, but the work will not come under his original grant, and he cannot afford to have it done on his own.

Becker said he is trying to get more funding to restore the lights, and Rowell is ready to do the work.

“It’s going to be pretty neat,” Rowell said. “There’s not too many left anymore.”