New life is being projected for a run-down former movie theater on the East Side noted for its glazed terra-cotta facade. A group of black media professionals has purchased the former Sattler Theatre, 512-516 Broadway, one mile east of Main Street, to serve as its headquarters and presentation space. The nonprofit group paid $40,000 to acquire the building from God’s Holy Temple and will seek to raise more than $1 million for its restoration, according to Michael Quinniey, chairman of Western New York Minority Media Professionals. The theater, near Jefferson Avenue, opened in 1914 as a 928-seat movie theater at a cost of $35,000 on the site of the wood-frame Casino Theatre. Click image to see interior pictures. It was commissioned by John G. Sattler, who also owned Sattler’s Department Store at 998 Broadway. The Sattler was designed in the Beaux Arts style by Henry Spann, who later designed North Park Theatre on Hertel Avenue and the former Savoy Theatre on William Street, the longtime home of the Buffalo Criterion newspaper. The Sattler changed hands in 1920 and was rechristened the Broadway Theatre, later known as Basil’s Broadway. The white terra-cotta building, which has been shuttered for 12 years, with its entrance and windows boarded up, retains decorative patterns accented in blue, red, yellow and green. The building became Muhammad’s Mosque 23 in the mid-1960s and was purchased and occupied by God’s Holy Temple from 1976 to 1984. The building was leased to Joy Temple Church from 1987 to 1996.
