National Register of Historic Places

These photographs, taken by Curt Mangel, were submitted to the National Register of Historic Places, hoping to have Shea's Buffalo Theatre declared a Historic Site and saved from demolition.

February 25, 1976

In 1977, the work of restoring the Mighty Wurlitzer organ was finally began. To supervise the restoration of the instrument, the Organ Committee was fortunate to engage the services of Allen Miller, perhaps the leading organ technician in the country, whose training and experience qualified him perfectly for the task ahead. Under Allen's watchful eye, contracts where let to re-build and re-finish the entire console, a modern solid state multiplex system was installed, missing pipes and ranks of pipes were replaced and the entire organ was re-leathered - even the re-voicing, a task made more difficult by the fact that all of the original voicers who had worked for Wurlitzer had passed on.

Thanks to his efforts, together with those a score of dedicated volunteer workers and a generous grant from the Margaret Wendt Foundation in Buffalo, the Shea's Buffalo Mighty Wurlitzer was re-dedicated in April of 1984 with Lyn Larsen at the console.

The Friends of the Buffalo Theatre ran Shea's Buffalo Theatre as a rental from the city of Buffalo, keeping the doors open and the lights on as they began the long, hard work of restoring the theater. By 1985, the city finally stepped up to take over paying utilities, forgave the deficit, and set-up The Shea's-O'Connell Preservation Guild, a nonprofit that leases the theater and manages Shea's, and still does so today.