Seating 3,500, it was originally designed as a movie palace in 1932 and later achieved fame as a showcase for live musical ice-skating spectacles.

[3][2] After the initial failure of the Music Hall in its first weeks, Rothafel suffered a heart attack and never returned to his new theaters.

The Center Theatre featured an elegant Art Deco design which was muted by comparison to the lavish Radio City Music Hall.

It had a three-tiered metal chandelier weighing six tons, and a ceiling studded with circles decorated in half-relief with mythological figures.

Now called the Center Theatre, it offered The Great Waltz and a few other shows but the theater was too large to find lasting success in this venture either.

Beneath it 28,000 feet (8,500 m) of pipe were laid, capable of continuously circulating a freezing solution at the rate of 500 US gallons per minute (1,900 L/min).

The final production at the theatre was the New York-portion of the 1954 Academy Awards, when Audrey Hepburn won Best Actress for Roman Holiday.

[9] Bob Jones University purchased the stage lifts and turntables from the Center Theatre and reassembled them in its Rodeheaver Auditorium, where the mechanisms are still in use today.