It is the largest theater and arts center on Cleveland's West Shore, educating and entertaining over 65,000 people per year.

On its 3.5 acres (1.4 ha) campus, Beck Center houses two stages producing live theater for children, teens and adults; two gallery spaces, and over thirty classrooms for educational programming for children and adults.

The Beck Center was originally named the "Guild of the Masques" when it was founded by Richard Kay in 1929; formally incorporating as the Lakewood Little Theatre in 1933.

The group moved onto its current site in Lakewood, Ohio in a theater originally designed for the movies, the Lucier, in 1938.

In the following decades, the group bought up contiguous land, and, in 1972 began a capital campaign to build a new center.