Allentown Lyric Theatre

The Allentown Lyric Theatre is a former boxing venue in Allentown, PA, USA, currently known as Miller Symphony Hall. The Hall's origins began as a farmer's market in 1817, which lasted until it's conversion into a theater between 1896 and 1899. The theater was designed at this point to be a staging venue for legitimate plays. Gradually over time the venue lost it's luster and became a more frequent staging ground for boxing and burlesque. By the late 1940s it had become the home of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra and the Allentown Community Concert Association. By the 1950s, the venue had continued to lose money, and had been marked for demolition as a retail space. A last minute effort by Donald and Sam Miller owner of the local paper, the Allentown Morning Call saved the building. It was re-purposed as the Allentown Symphony Hall, and has remained in operation as a symphony hall to the present. It was renamed Miller Symphony Hall in 2012, in recognition of the Miller family.

The Lyric Theatre was used during the 1910s frequently for boxing, in association with the promotion of Charles Ettinger. It continued to be used frequently into the early 1920s, before declining in use after the mid-1920s. The venue was occasionally used after that as an indoor venue in Allentown; though most popular programs in Allentown were fought outdoors in the summer months after the late 1920s. Pep Barone and Claude Zotter were involved in the promotions here in the 1940s.

Source: Wikipedia article on Miller Symphony Hall [1]]