The Lafayette Theatre is a nationally acclaimed movie palace located in downtown Suffern, New York, built in 1923. Its primary function is first-run movies, but it also houses special events like its popular weekly Big Screen Classics film shows. It is also notable for housing a Wurlitzer theatre organ, which is played before Big Screen Classics shows. History The Lafayette Theatre was named for Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette who fought, along with General George Washington, in Suffern and the Town of Ramapo. The theater's history began when the Suffern Amusement Company hired noted theatre architect Eugene De Rosa to design a movie theatre for a location on Lafayette Avenue in downtown Suffern. De Rosa's concept was primarily Adamesque, but also with a combination of French and Italian Renaissance influences, subtly mixed in a Beaux Arts style. The theatre was also equipped with a custom-designed Möller pipe organ to accompany silent films and augment live performances. The Lafayette opened its doors in 1924 with the silent film classic Scaramouche and flourished through the rest of the 1920s with a combination of film presentations and live vaudeville shows. A renovation in 1927 added distinctive opera boxes, and shortly thereafter the projection equipment was updated to play sound film. During the mid-1930s, an air-cooling system was installed which forced the removal of the pipe organ. It was during this renovation that the original chandelier was also removed. After World War II ended, movie-going habits changed with the advent of television. To keep pace with audience expectations, the Lafayette changed, too. Equipment to handle 3-D film was installed in early 1953 and many notable entries in the short-lived 3-D boom played at the Lafayette. Later that year, the Lafayette was the first theatre in Rockland County to install CinemaScope apparatus to show wide-screen, stereophonic-sound movies. The premiere engagement was the Biblical epic The Robe, during the Christmas holiday of 1953. The Lafayette's popularity declined in the 1950s and 1960s as downtown populations moved further into the suburbs and television took hold as the popular entertainment medium of the day. However, the theater was spared both the wrecking ball and the multiplexing boom, where large single-screen auditoriums were divided into small theatres to accommodate several films at once. As part of a renovation in the late 1980s, the old stage was refurbished and the New York Theatre Organ Society installed a new pipe