Tower Theater has been dormant for years. What’s next?

For the better part of a century, it was a cultural icon. Upper Darby’s own crown jewel of entertainment, first as a vaudeville and movie theater, and then as a premiere destination for live music of all kinds — resulting in the legendary status by which it is known.

Now, the venerable Tower Theater sits mothballed on 69th Street, devoid of the teeming crowds of concertgoers and monumental musicians that made it famous. These days, it’s almost hard to believe the list of heavy-hitters that made the trek to Delaware County to play there.

David Bowie — check. Bruce Springsteen? Of course. The Rolling Stones, The Replacements, The Grateful Dead. Ozzy Osbourne, too — and Bob Marley. Many of them more than once, along with almost countless others.

And yet, the venue looks to have gone out with a whimper, an interactive Vincent Van Gogh art exhibit serving as its last live event in 2021 and 2022. Since then, the Tower has sat dormant.

So, three years into the Tower’s abeyance, what is happening with such a historic venue? That’s what one reader asked via Curious Philly, The Inquirer’s forum for questions on all things local.

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At this stage, it appears the Tower’s fate has not been determined. Live Nation, the venue’s owner, had no updates to share at this time. And Upper Darby Township officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The township’s council, however, did discuss the Tower at a February meeting. There, Rita LaRue, Upper Darby’s director of Community and Economic Development, said the township has been in touch with Live Nation “over the past few years,” and had been in talks ahead of the “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience” exhibit regarding a partnership or acquisition to keep the Tower open.

“After they had the Van Gogh exhibit, they decided to close it for a while as they ascertained their other properties in the area,” LaRue said in February. She added that she continues to speak to the venue’s ownership roughly monthly about its future.

Upper Darby also worked with the Urban Land Institute to conduct a study known as “Destination: Downtown Upper Darby,” which brought in experts to determine how it could develop its downtown district. A panel visited the area in April, and among their focuses was the Tower, which was “identified as one of several anchors,”said the institute’s Philadelphia executive director, Kevin Moran.

“[The] panel recommended Upper Darby Township prioritize returning the Tower Theater as an entertainment destination long-term, with several short-term activation ideas also offered,” Moran said. A publicly released report on the institute’s findings is forthcoming.

Moran’s description is an apt one. Opened in 1928, the Tower Theater arrived by way of real estate developer John H. McClatchy, who was a driving force behind developing the 69th and Market area from what was then farmland into a bustling commercial district.

The Tower was designed as the neighborhood’s Art Deco linchpin. On its roof, McClatchy added a radio towerlike spire that, though never functional, served as a symbol of modernity and landmark architectural feature, The Inquirer reported in 2019.

For decades, the Tower stuck to movies and vaudeville acts, and hosted performances by jazz greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the 1950s. It also served as something of a community touchstone, with classes from Upper Darby High School holding their graduation ceremonies there over the years, according to early Inquirer reports.

But in the 1970s, it started on the road to becoming the music venue giant it is remembered as today, thanks to promoter Rick Green, who began booking rock shows there under his Midnight Sun Concerts banner. The first came on June 14, 1972, with Dave Mason and Buzzy Linhart‘s inaugural performance coming off as an “unquestionable smash,” as former Daily News music critic Jonathan Takiff wrote at the time.

Midnight Sun booked Tower shows until 1975, putting on about 120 concerts in total, according to an Inquirer report from the time. That year, the Tower’s then-owner, the A.M. Ellis theater chain, sold the venue to Midnight Sun’s much-larger competitor, local music impresario Larry Magid’s Electric Factory Concerts, which would helm the venue’s promotions for decades.

The company’s reign at the Tower started with a December 1975 Hall and Oates show that not only broke a house attendance record, but marked the first live radio broadcast from the theater at WMMR, The Inquirer reported. That reign lasted until the turn of the millennium, when Electric Factory Concerts was sold to SFX Entertainment, which itself was then sold to Clear Channel Communications, which later spun off its concert division as Live Nation.

August 2019 marked something of a symbolic blow, with the removal of the iconic tower from the venue’s roof. The aging spire had deteriorated significantly in its 90-plus years, and became a threat to public safety, prompting its dismantling, company and township officials said at the time. The sphere that sat atop the tower was donated to the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project museum in Montgomery County, according to an Inquirer report.

Despite calls for a new tower to be erected on the Tower, it never came. After the pandemic hit in early 2020, shows at the venue trickled ultimately to a stop, and never returned following the closure of the Van Gogh exhibit in 2022.

Now, in 2025, it feels like the more things change, the more they stay the same. On the night the Tower held its first rock concert in 1972, former owner A.M. Ellis’s general manager, Ben Zimmerman, had some words that today feel prophetic.

“The tower was never meant to be a movie theater,” Zimmerman told The Inquirer. “We’re hoping that these rock shows are a shot in the arm...to bring back the old glory here.”