Moving the Empire

ROTters probably know that I go to the Signature Theatre on W. 42nd Street often, though you probably don’t know how I get there.  I take the Broadway BMT subway to Times Square and then the M42 crosstown bus along 42nd to 10th Avenue.  The route passes the AMC Empire 25 at 234 W 42nd, the last street address on the south side of the street at 8th. 

When the bus goes past the AMC movie multiplex, I always think of the move (reported, with diagrams and all, in the NYT) of the entire Empire Theatre from its perch at 236 W. 42nd Street, in the middle of the southern side of the block between 7th and 8th Avenues, to the west end of the block to become the façade and lobby of the AMC Empire 25.  Does anyone else remember that almost-unbelievable feat in March 1998?

(Okay, I can’t explain how the AMC cineplex is at number 234 and the Empire was originally at number 236.  The Empire was in the middle of the block and the AMC is at the west end; house numbers on all cross streets in the Manhattan grid go up from 5th Avenue—on the West Side, that means increasing from east to west.  But the Empire’s old lot was east of AMC, yet it has a higher house number.  Theoretically, that’s impossible.  I double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked the theaters’ addresses, and the numbers are correct.  I can only guess that during the remaking of 42nd Street, the lots along the 200 block were renumbered, perhaps when some buildings were demolished or combined.)

The “New 42nd Street,” as the remaking of the strip was dubbed, was being planned and created.  A builder jacked up the Empire in the center of the block, put it on wheels, rolled it west almost to 8th Avenue, and set it into the south side of the street as the front of a new multiplex.

For those who are too young to know about this odd bit of New York City theater history, or weren’t around the Big Apple, or just plain don’t remember it—let me tell you how it went down.  Or, rather, west, as Horace Greeley (1811-72), great New York City newspaperman, might have pointed out.  (The editor of the New-York Tribune, which was publishing when the Empire was up and running as a Broadway playhouse, popularized the famous phrase “Go West, young man” in an editorial in 1865.)

Let me start with some “real”—that is, old—theater history.  The backstory, as we’d say today.

There have been, in fact, two Empire Theatres in New York City, both Broadway houses.  The first one was built in 1893 at 1430 Broadway, between 40th and 41st Streets.  A 1,100-seat theater, this Empire closed and was demolished in 1953 after 60 years of producing both revivals and first-run plays.  It plays a small role in this story.

(The 41st Street Empire had a shot at a second act, too.  When it was torn down, Robert Porterfield, 1905-71, founder of the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, in 1933—one of the United States’ oldest and most esteemed regional rep theaters, salvaged many of the Empire’s interior furnishings and equipment.  Items recycled by Porterfield included seats, paintings, stage lights, and a lighting control system, some of which are still in use at the Barter today.  Perhaps it was a kind of forecast of what was to come 45 years later.)

The second Empire was originally named the Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre, only the eighth theater built on the street.  It was built for theatrical producer Al (Albert Herman) Woods (1870-1951) by noted theater architect Thomas W. Lamb (1871-1942), one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the U.S. during the 20th century.  Its Beaux Arts, polychromed (green, blue, orange, and red) terra cotta façade featured an immense arched window several stories high above the marquee.  Inside, a mural by French artist Arthur Brounet (1866-1941) adorned the lobby and the auditorium, with a richly detailed plaster ceiling and proscenium arch, was decorated in Roman, Greek, and Egyptian motifs. 

Woods specialized in light comedies and he named his theater for his most successful and profitable star, Julian Eltinge (1881-1941), who was best known for playing female roles.  Among the other stars Woods presented at the Eltinge were John Barrymore (The Yellow Ticket, 1914), Laurence Olivier (Murder on the Second Floor, his U.S. début, 1929), and Clark Gable (Love, Honor and Betray, 1930).

The 900-seat Eltinge. a small house, opened on 11 September 1912 with Within the Law by Bayard Veiller (1869-1943), which ran for 541 performances despite an outright pan from the New York Times.  The theater fared poorly after the stock market crash of 1929, and in 1931 Woods leased the Eltinge to Max Rudnick (1896-?) as a burlesque house.  Comedian Jackie Gleason (1916-87), later a television star, got his start here as the emcee and in 1935, Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59), who’ll feature in the upcoming story of the theater’s move, met doing separate acts at the Eltinge.

Burlesque shows also featured strippers, and New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1882-1947; in office: 1934-45), determined to close all the burlesque houses in the city, shuttered the Eltinge in 1937.  In 1942, after having been boarded up for five years, the Eltinge reopened as a movie theater called Laff Movie, a first-run house.  

By 1954, the Times Square neighborhood had begun to deteriorate. After the 41st Street Empire was razed, the Eltinge was renamed the Empire, becoming a second-run grindhouse screening low-budget horror, splatter, and exploitation films.  By the mid-1980s, Times Square had become so sleazy, with porn houses, peep shows, sex shops, drug sellers, and hookers inhabiting every street and corner, that nothing else could survive, and the Empire on 42nd Street closed its doors for good in 1986. 

According to a historic-preservation agreement reached in 1981 by New York City and New York State, the theater building couldn’t be demolished, however, and it stood, along with six others like it, derelict and ignored as the Theatre District went to wrack and ruin.  In 1990, however, the New 42nd Street, a non-profit organization, was formed to oversee the redevelopment of the seven neglected and historic theaters on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, including the Empire, and to reestablish the block as a desirable tourist destination. 

The Empire Theatre site at the center of the block became part of an entertainment complex planned by Forest City Ratner Companies, a Manhattan-based real estate development firm.  It occupied the eastern end of the project’s 42nd Street frontage, so the Empire was, as I already said, lifted and moved westward to 8th Avenue to become the entrance and lobby of the AMC Theatres cinema complex. 

Here’s how that happened.

The plan was announced in June 1996.  Forest City Ratner had been selected in 1994 to redevelop the property occupied by the Empire and the buildings next to it to the west.  AMC Entertainment, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, had already been instrumental in persuading the Walt Disney Company to renovate the New Amsterdam Theatre (built in 1903) at 214 W. 42nd Street, east of the Empire, as the flagship for Disney Theatrical Productions on Broadway.  (That renovation of an architectural jewel of 42nd Street and one of the oldest surviving Broadway playhouses was completed in 1997 and Disney opened the New Amsterdam with The Lion King, which ran there for nine years before transferring to another Broadway house.)

Madam Tussauds, the British wax museum, had agreed to create a branch a few doors east of the AMC entrance using the same transplanted Empire as its space.  As a balance for the AMC entrance through the former Empire Theatre, Tussauds incorporated the façade of the Sam H. Harris Theatre (built in 1914) at 226 W. 42nd; the interior of the theater was demolished in 1997 to construct the museum and entertainment center.  (Madame Tussauds New York location opened in 2000.)

In order to clear the lot at 236 42nd Street, Ratner was confronted with a problem to solve.  The 1981 historic-preservation agreement prohibited razing the Empire Theatre, so Ratner had to choose between repurposing the building or moving it intact. 

Now, across the street from the Empire were situated two other historic playhouses: the Lyric Theatre at 213 W. 42nd Street, designed in 1903 by architect Victor Hugo Koehler, and the Academy Theatre at 223 W. 42nd, built in 1910 by Eugene De Rosa.  Both theaters were slated for demolition by the New 42nd Street, so Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky (b. 1949) of Livent purchased them in 1996 and created the Ford Center for the Performing Arts by combining elements of both old theaters.  (The Ford Center opened in January 1998, but Livent declared bankruptcy in November 1998.  The theater, now under new ownership, was renamed the Lyric in 2014.)

This option, however, was obviated for the Empire because, explained Bruce Ratner, president of Forest City Ratner, the Empire blocked street-level access to large blocks of space along 42nd Street that would become other commercial enterprises in the development.  In addition, the engineers said that it would be easier to move the entire building than to take out parts of the old one and incorporate them into a new structure as Drabinsky had done with the Ford Center.  One proposal, for instance, had been to dismantle the Beaux-Arts façade of the theater and reassemble it up the block, but the architects determined it would cost as much to do that as it would to move the whole building.

So, that left only moving the 85-year-old historic theater without damaging its façade and ornate plaster ceiling and proscenium arch.  New York State hired Robert Silman, a structural engineer, to assure that the Empire’s auditorium with its eccentric interior design, including figures in Egyptian headdresses playing pipes, could be moved without falling apart.  Ratner said that approvals for the move from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and other agencies had all been obtained.

“People have moved bigger things in the world,” said Ratner, but Silman added, “One doesn’t often move buildings of this size in the middle of a congested urban setting."  Common wisdom asserts that the Empire Theater is the largest structure ever moved in New York City.  Silman explained: “It really doesn’t matter how heavy it is as long as you put enough stuff underneath to hold it up.” 

The engineer observed, “The concept is elegantly simple”—as we’ll be able to judge for ourselves shortly.  “This is nothing more than a classical shoring job,” said Anthony J. Mazzo, a senior vice president of Urban Foundations/Engineering of Brooklyn, which did the work.  “The horizontal move is secondary.”  Mazzo explained: “It’s like using a dolly to move a piece of furniture.”

The literally inch-by-inch journey of the Empire Theatre from the middle of the 200 block of 42nd Street to its new resting place was a mere 168 feet, 0.16 of the length of the block.

An earlier moving date—Tuesday, 17 February—had been scheduled, but the job was postponed so that the work could be done over a weekend.  The theater had therefore been hoisted onto its tracks for over a week, reducing the time it took on 1 March to accomplish the move.  Further decreasing the time and distance for the trip west was a test-run on Sunday, 22 February, when the building was shifted 30 feet to make sure the process would work.  It did, and the remaining move on the 1st would be only 138 feet.   It took four hours, from 7 in the morning of 1 March until around 11 o’clock.   

At a cost of $1.2 million (about $1.9 million today), that comes out to $588 an inch ($927 today)!  Some other stats: the Empire Theatre building was estimated to weigh 3,700 tons, or 7.4 million pounds.  (That makes the haulage rate 16¢ a pound—pretty cheap, considering.)  It took three months, starting in November 1997, to prepare the building for transport.  The building moved west at about 35 feet per hour. 

To prepare the theater for transit, a steel platform was constructed inside the building at its base.  To prevent the building from being damaged during the move, steel beams were welded to the underside of the platform and fastened to the building’s walls to support them.  The theater walls were rigidly braced so that the building wouldn’t twist or warp during the move.  

Beneath the building and next to it, eight steel tracks were laid, stretching from the theater’s original site to its new location across the block.  The platform with the theater on top was lifted up one-eighth of an inch by vertical hydraulic jacks so that steel rollers could be installed between the platform and the rails.  The jacks lowered the platform onto the rollers, transferring the weight of the building onto the track system, then the jacks were removed.  Then the theater was separated from its foundation by cutting through the walls at their base.  As I reported earlier, this was accomplished by 17 February, 12 days before the final move.

Another set of hydraulic jacks attached to the rails, horizontally oriented, then pushed the platform holding the theater, without putting any pressure directly on the building, along the tracks to the theater’s new foundation.  On 22 February, a week before the final leg, eastbound traffic was halted along the 200 block of 42nd Street and the jacks impelled the theater the first 30 feet of its journey to test the system.  “Everything had to be perfect,” said Heymi Kuriel, vice president of Urban Foundation.  “Every bolt had to be tested.” 

The jacks moved the platform with the building on top five feet along its route in about five minutes (that is, one foot a minute); then the jacks were repositioned and the five-foot advance was repeated until the journey was completed. 

On 1 March, with the south side of the roadway closed again, the Empire Theatre was moved the last 138 feet to its new home.  Leading the way, attached to the front (that is, the westbound) end of the slow-moving theater building were two huge balloons . . . in the shapes of Lou Costello and Bud Abbott, the two renowned comics who met at the Eltinge in its burlesque days and formed a successful partnership that lasted the rest of their lives.  It seemed as if they were tugging the old Empire down the street.

A new foundation at 234 W. 42nd Street had been prepared for the old building and the theater was lowered into place.  New walls between the foundation and the base of the structure filled in the portions that were removed for the relocation.

The Empire was touched up and appointed to serve as the ticket lobby for AMC Empire 25, which opened in April 2000.  Moviegoers ascend escalators through the old theater’s proscenium opening—where the stage would have been (lost, along with the theater’s fly-loft)—to the upper floors where the movie screens are. 

The 25 film theaters on the upper four floors in the complex—only the entrance is on the street level—range from under 200 seats to about 400 (for a total capacity of nearly 5,000 seats).  (Much of the AMC building, designed by the firm of Beyer Blinder Belle of New York City and Washington, D.C., noted for its work in architectural preservation and adaptive re-use, is actually behind the Empire and Tussauds, essentially on 41st Street, although there is no public access from that street.)

“Simple,” as engineer Robert Silman characterized the process, but only because it was straightforward—not because it was easy.  Complicating the operation was the fact that the Times Square Theatre District is built on turn-of-the-century residential lots, so the Empire sat on ground once occupied by townhouses with basements, excavated out of the bedrock which is usually right below the island’s surface. 

Urban Foundations/Engineering had to drive piles down into the now-lowered bedrock along the route of the transfer and the track system was laid over the piles.  This was necessary so that bedrock. that supports Manhattan’s skyscrapers, would bear the weight of the Empire Theatre, rather than the loose dirt filling the old cellars.  “Essentially, we have constructed a temporary steel bridge founded on rock to support the building during its transfer,” Urban’s Mazzo said.  The piles had to be removed after the transfer so that the commercial properties could be built.

When the empire Theatre arrived at its new site, it was greeted by a crowd of dignitaries which included New York State Governor George E. Pataki (b. 1945; in office: 1995-2006).  Kuriel remarked, “It’s amazing how smooth it went.  The birds at the top didn’t even move,” he added, referring to the nests near the old theater’s roof.

[There were many critics of the remaking of 42nd Street in the ’90s.  Most said the New 42nd Street organization was sanitizing the neighborhood; the word “Disney-fy” was used often.  Some advocates for the area’s longtime residents and mom-and-pop shop-owners pointed out that the lower-income residents were being displaced for wealthier folks and big corporations.  That was probably at least partly so.

[I’m not here, however, to argue for or against the renewal of the Theatre District and whether it was an ultimate good or not.  I’m just reporting on one event in local theater history that was, inarguably, an engineering feat that I found fascinating and noteworthy.

[Let me recount an illustrative anecdote from my own experience.  In 1982 or ’83, I took a trip to Egypt.  I was principally in Cairo, but I took a one-day jaunt to Abu Simbel, site of two massive rock temples situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser. 

[Now, Lake Nasser was created as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam across the waters of the Nile between 1958 and 1970.  It would have submerged the great temples, which were carved out of the mountainside  along the river in the 13th century BCE . . . if nothing were done to prevent the loss.  So an international team of archaeologists proposed to move them to safer ground—including building an artificial mountain on the shores of the new lake-to-be.

[When I saw the temples from the air—you fly from Cairo to Abu Simbel Airport—my imagination conjured up the meeting of the archaeologists and the Egyptian government when the proposal for the project was broached.  ‘You want to move what WHERE!?’ I heard an official gasp.

[Well, that’s sort of the way I felt about the idea of lifting the Empire Theatre up and rolling it up the block and replanting it.  ‘You want to move what WHERE!?’  But they did.  Astonishing!]

"10 Theatres In Weird Places"

[I was checking some U.K. reviews of a British play, one of which was in the London Telegraph.  While I was reading the notice, I spotted a link to a story headlined “10 Theatres in Weird Places,” and it intrigued me.  So I made a note to go back and have a look after I finished reading the four or five reviews I’d found on line, and when I did, I decided it was interesting enough to repost on ROT when I had a slot to fill.  (My favorite weird theater is the one in a men’s “convenience”—that’s the British euphemism for ‘bathroom’!)  The theaters in this collection are all British (eight are English; two are Scottish), but the facts are wonderfully idiosyncratic.  I wish someone had compiled a list of “weird theaters” like this in the U.S.—I’m sure we have plenty.  (The university theater at my alma mater back in the ’60s was in a 19th-century building that had previously served as a shoe factory and a [rumored] brothel, among other purposes.  I’m sure other playhouses in this country can match that pedigree.)  Until someone does put together such a list, however, enjoy this little lagniappe—an unlooked-for gift—from London.

[I’ve taken the liberty of editing the Telegraph’s comments.  I didn’t cut anything, but I added information here and there that I thought would help my fellow Americans follow the descriptions and histories.  Be on your toes, though: I didn’t change any Britishisms in diction or spelling!]

CUTTY SARK, LONDON SE10

Picture: Cutty Sark Trust

By day, the lower hold of London’s famous tea clipper, the Cutty Sark [built in 1869; located near the centre of Greenwich, in south-east London], is crammed with tea chests, offering visitors a glimpse of how the cargo ship would have looked in its 18th-century heyday. These days, however, the chests contain new spoils: the components of an intimate theatre, which can be set up in the hold – either with a thrust stage or in the round – in just under an hour. The Michael Edwards Studio Theatre (rmg.co.uk/cuttysark/studio-theatre), which opens on January 29, seats up to 110 people and will host a programme of cabaret, comedy, music, special lectures, small scale-drama and even films, which will be projected onto yet more stacks of tea chests. Eventually, the team behind the theatre hopes to extend their programming to use the rest of the ship; two proposed ideas are promenade theatre and a performance of The Tempest on the ship’s deck.  

TOBACCO FACTORY THEATRES, BRISTOL

Picture: Tobacco Factory

In the early 20th century, Bristol [a city in South West England, about 118 miles due west of London] was home to the headquarters of Imperial Tobacco – a vast complex of buildings covering around 1 million square feet. In the Seventies and Eighties, the factory was closed down and quickly became derelict, with a section of it being demolished. But George Ferguson, then head of RIBA [Royal Institute of British Architects] and now mayor of Bristol, bought the remainder of the building, transforming it into a thriving theatre with a proudly diverse programme. In August 2009, the Factory Theatre (tobaccofactorytheatres.com), as it is now called, was joined by the Brewery Theatre, a cosy 90-seat auditorium just down the road in a former tyre garage, which backs onto the Bristol Beer Factory.  

MINACK THEATRE, CORNWALL

Picture: Alamy

This spectacular open-air theatre began its life in the 1920s when a sparky young woman named Rowena Cade arrived in West Cornwall [a region of England abour 285 miles southwest of London]. Having lost her father during the First World War, Cade bought a piece of rocky headland known as Minack, built a house for herself and her mother and set about making theatre. Performances were initially staged in her garden, but a production of The Tempest prompted Cade to consider using the craggy outcrop at the end of her garden as a stage. With the help of two craftsmen, she built a rough stage and seating from local granite, and, with her audience facing out to sea, the Minack Theatre (www.minack.com) staged its first performance. Today, the theatre’s season runs from April to September, with a mix of concerts and plays, many of which are performed by small theatre companies. It also offers a great range of shows for children.  

THEATRE OF SMALL CONVENIENCE, GREAT MALVERN

Picture: Alamy

Originally a Victorian gentlemen's lavatory, this tiny stone building in Great Malvern [an area of the spa town of Malvern, Worcestershire, 140 miles northwest of London] served as a children’s clothes shop and antique store before Dennis Neale, a keen puppeteer and drama enthusiast, bought it in 1997. Seating only 12 audience members at a time, the theatre holds five-minute puppet shows, performed from behind a façade made up of old furniture and broken musical instruments, which Neale scavenged or bought during the two years it took him to convert the building (wctheatre.co.uk). The puppets, too, are made from assorted bric-a-brac – everything from boxing gloves to sewing machine treadles – and the theatre’s decorative painted walls are the work of Neale’s son. The theatre opens for extra sessions during the school holidays but Neale insists that most of his visitors are adults. “Perhaps they have short attention spans, like me,” he says. 

JACKSONS LANE, LONDON N6

Picture: Jacksons Lane

The red bricks of this beautiful Grade II listed Edwardian church [a former Wesleyan Methodist church, opened in 1905; Grade II designates buildings that are of special interest] in Highgate [a suburban area of north London] contain not only a RIBA-award winning 160-capacity theatre, complete with original gothic arches, but also a dance and rehearsal studio (nestled in the eaves of the church’s vaulted ceiling), café, bar and four other multi-purpose spaces (jacksonslane.org.uk). The venue specialises in contemporary performance and circus. Expect mime, colourful physical theatre for children and – thanks to the impressive dimensions of the main theatre – aerial acts, German Wheel practitioners and acrobatics.  

ROYAL EXCHANGE, MANCHESTER

Picture: John Husband / Alamy

Founded in 1976, Manchester’s [a city about 210 miles northwest of London] Royal Exchange is housed in the city’s former Cotton Trading Exchange. The main theatre, which holds 760 people in the round, sits within a seven-sided steel and glass module, suspended from four huge columns of the Exchange’s domed Great Hall, but the building also has a small flexible studio space. While it is now thriving, the producing theatre has had a rocky history. In 1996, an IRA bomb exploded nearby, causing such extensive damage to the theatre that it was forced to close for two years and complete a £32 million [$45.2 million] renovation. It reopened in 1998 and has been going strong ever since, gaining a reputation for staging promising new writing (royalexchange.co.uk).

UNDERBELLY, EDINBURGH

Picture: Jeffrey Blackler / Alamy

One of the lynchpins of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe [world’s largest arts festival, held annually in August], the Underbelly is a cavernous maze of performance spaces, eateries and bars set in the vaults below the central library of Edinburgh [the capital of Scotland, 415 miles north of London]. First opened in 2000, the venue originally operated out of three spaces – the Iron Belly, the White Belly and the Big Belly – but a host of new ‘bellies’ has been added in the last 14 years, and the venue now offers everything from big-name comedians and burlesque acts in the Big Belly to more experimental performances – think one-man ukulele storytelling acts – in the intimate Baby Belly (underbelly.co.uk) .  

WATERMILL THEATRE, WEST BERKSHIRE

Picture: Watermill

Arguably one of the UK’s prettiest theatres, the Watermill (watermill.org.uk) in Bagnor, West Berkshire, [a hamlet close to the town of Newbury, 61½ miles west of London] was founded in 1967 in, you've guessed it, a converted mill. Dating back to 1830 (it is even recorded in the Domesday book) the building was used as a corn, fullers [fulling is the cleansing of wool cloth to eliminate impurities], and fine paper mill before falling into disrepair. It was restored, along with its tithe barn [used in the Middle Ages for storing rents and tithes], by theatre enthusiast David Gollins and in 1981 was purchased by Jill and James Sargant, who developed it from a local rep into a renowned producing house, specialising in Shakespeare and musical theatre. Many of its productions now transfer to both the West End and Broadway.  

TRAMWAY, GLASGOW

Picture: Tramway

Glasgow’s [the largest city in Scotland, 412 miles north of London] sprawling contemporary arts centre was founded in 1998 but the history of its home reaches back to 1893. The building originally served as the city’s main tram terminus, depot and factory, before becoming the Museum of Transport in the early 1960s, when the tram system became obsolete. [‘Tram’ is the British word for trolley or streetcar; ‘tramway’ is the streetcar line.] Tramway was eventually launched as a result of the search for a venue to house what would be the only UK performances of Peter Brook’s Indian epic Mahabharata in 1988. Today, the venue specialises in contemporary visual and performing art – hosting its programme in five very different spaces – as well as providing a headquarters for the Scottish Ballet (tramway.org) .  

LANGHAM HOTEL, LONDON W1

Picture: Will Wintercross

In 2012, acclaimed theatre company Defibrillator took over three rooms in Holborn’s Grange Hotel, squeezing audience members in alongside actors as they performed three short, site-specific works by Tennessee Williams. This year [sorry, this was in 2014] they’re doing it all again. But while they have once more chosen Williams as their subject – they will perform his one-act plays Green Eyes, Sunburst, and The Pink Bedroom – they have upgraded their surroundings somewhat. Audience members will arrive at the Langham [in the district of Marylebone in central London], Europe’s first ‘grand hotel’, and be led on an immersive journey from the decadent lobby to a set of three luxurious suites (thehotelplays.co.uk). 

[Posted on the London Telegraph, 29 January 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10603169/10-theatres-in-weird-places.html?frame=2804909; downloaded on 9 April 2016.]

The Signature Center

After 14 years at the Peter Norton Space on West 42nd Street near 11th Avenue, New York City’s Signature Theatre Company opened what it designates as the first new theater complex in Manhattan since Lincoln Center, the Pershing Square Signature Center at 42nd and 10th, on Tuesday, 31 January, just in time for the company’s 20th anniversary season with a morning ceremony featuring New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, architect Frank Gehry, and actor Edward Norton (who chaired the theater’s capital campaign). STC’s first production of the season, a revival of Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot, opened for previews the same evening. (I’ll be seeing that show on 22 February and an ROT report will follow.) The new complex, which contains three theaters as well as other facilities for the company, was designed by the Los Angeles-based Gehry. Located on three of the lower floors of a new highrise residence and hotel (Yotel New York At Times Square) at 480 W. 42nd Street, New York’s first “green” Off-Broadway theater is part of the 63-story glass tower that’s known as MiMa (for the Middle of Manhattan), which opened last spring. (Gehry had no association with the design of MiMa itself, created by the Miami-based architecture firm of Arquitectonica.) With the Signature Center, the company inaugurates several new programs, including playwrights’ residencies.

The Signature Theatre Company, founded in 1991 by James Houghton, devotes each season to the work of one playwright. (New York’s Signature Theatre Company shouldn’t be confused with the award-winning Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, which produces musicals both old and new.) Usually the playwrights spotlighted are living and the season includes at least one new work, either a world première or a New York début, but circumstances have occasionally interfered. For the 2006-07 season, for example, STC announced that the selected dramatist would be August Wilson and that he would introduce a one-man piece, his newest work after completing the 10-play cycle on the African-American experience. Wilson died of liver cancer in October 2005, after the announcement, and the Wilson estate threatened to withdraw the plays. STC was able to negotiate an agreement and presented three Wilson plays, all revivals. Again in 2009, as STC was developing Horton Foote’s nine-play series about his father, The Orphans’ Home Cycle, the dramatist died after completing the scripts (produced in association with Hartford Stage in Connecticut, where they were first presented). Foote died in March and the Hartford production débuted in September, so the author never lived to see the epic work on stage. (STC has also occasionally presented seasons of plays by mixed authors, such as the Negro Ensemble season in 2008-09 and the seasons of 2000-01 and 2001-02, which were dubbed “All-Premiere Celebrations.”)

In November 2005, STC launched its Ticket Initiative to provide low-cost tickets to patrons. The troupe lined up a group of sponsors to subsidize the program, which initially offered all seats at $15 each for the originally-scheduled run of every production. (Extensions revert to the standard Off-Broadway price, approximately $75 now.) Subscribers got the whole season, usually three plays, for $15 per show and single-ticket purchasers got the same price at the box office and on line. Eventually, the ticket price rose to $20 a seat until 2010, when the original program expired. STC negotiated with new sponsors and the current cost of all seats for the initial performances is $25. One of the reasons I’ve gone back to STC so often, even if I’ve subscribed to other theaters in the same season, is that the cost is so much lower than theater of its quality at another company. Now called the Signature Ticket Initiative: A Generation of Access, the program is scheduled to continue until 2031.

The troupe, which has won numerous awards and accolades since its earliest seasons, gets consistently good to excellent reviews in the New York press and presents strong, well-acted, -directed, and -designed productions of first-rate plays by a variety of important writers, from Romulus Linney to Adrienne Kennedy. I haven’t subscribed to every season, but it’s the only company to which I’ve returned over and over again and enjoyed almost all its presentations. I’ve occasionally questioned the theater’s choice of script (Edward Albee’s Occupant and Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days, both in 2002), but never the stage work it generated. Several have been extraordinary theater experiences, namely The Orphans’ Home Cycle, an astounding event from every perspective (see my reports on ROT on 25 and 28 February 2010), and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (11 December 2011 on ROT).

The playwright in focus for a Signature season has always been engaged in the production process (with the obvious exceptions), but the new Signature Center will allow the company to expand the residency programs. The original "one writer/one season" program is now called Residency One. The initial residency was established 20 years ago to provide the dramatist freedom and support, and afford New York audiences a full experience of an accomplished artist's body of work. This program continues this season with the works of Athol Fugard (Blood Knot, My Children! My Africa!, and The Train Driver). The Legacy Program, originally marking Signature's 10th anniversary, invites past playwrights-in-residence to present revivals of established works or new plays. In the past, this was an occasional special program of STC, but with the expanded facilities, it looks like it will be a seasonal addition to the company’s offerings. This season, the Legacy playwright is Edward Albee (subject of the 1993-94 STC season) with The Lady from Dubuque as the first Legacy production at the Signature Center. (I’m scheduled to see Lady on 9 March and will report on the production shortly thereafter.)

A third program facilitated by the new complex is Residency Five, Signature's latest endeavor. Residency Five will give a group of emerging writers an artistic home and provide them the opportunity to build a body of work with three full productions over the course of their five-year residencies. The first young dramatists with productions this season are Katori Hall (Hurt Village), Will Eno (Title and Deed), and Kenneth Lonergan (whose previous work includes This Is Our Youth at Second Stage, 1998-99) with an as-yet unnamed new play; two other writers also have residencies but aren’t represented on the 2011-12 Signature Center’s stages: Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons, 2009-10) and Regina Taylor (Crowns at Second Stage, 2002-03).

Though STC currently reaches out to schools and to young artists through the Theatre Development Fund and other organizations, offering meetings with professional artists and special performances, the company has no education program in place now. The limited space in their previous facilities restricted what the troupe could manage, and the planning, financing, and building of the Signature Center has been a consuming occupation for the past seven years. Starting Residency Five and mounting multiple stage productions at the same time where they had been used to doing only one at a time—previous seasons usually comprised three or four plays while 2011-12 includes seven—surely has meant a complete rethinking of STC’s management and administrative practices as well. But a spokesman for STC announced that an education program is on the theater’s agenda for the near future now that its permanent home is a reality and the Ticket Initiative has been guaranteed for 20 years to come. As for when such a program might begin or what it will entail, that remained unspecified, however.

STC was originally one of the arts organizations selected in 2004 to take up residence in the World Trade Center Performing Arts Center. Gehry came on board at that time, designated as one of the architects of the proposed building. But by 2007, when, among other impediments, those plans couldn’t be financed, Signature had to look for another space. The lease on the Peter Norton Space was scheduled to expire last year, and STC got the chance to obtain extensive space in the new building being developed by the Related Companies. Plans for the green space also had to keep the costs low, so Gehry planned to make substantial use of traditional materials with raw finishes in innovative ways. The architect designed the complex using mostly concrete, glass, and 45,000 square feet of plywood. “That’s the same plywood you would buy at Home Depot!” remarked Artistic Director Houghton, and to prevent the common building material from looking cheap, the plywood, a motif of Gehry’s design for the Signature Center, was treated, stained, and warped in unusual ways.

Before moving to the $66 million, 70,000-square-foot, Signature Center, the theater had limited facilities, with a single performance space at the Peter Norton and administrative offices about a half mile away on 9th Avenue at 45th Street. The new complex houses three theaters, two rehearsal studios, state-of-the-art backstage and technical services, and new administrative offices. (While large scenery pieces are still built off site, the Signature Center includes tech shops to serve the three houses.) In addition to that work space, the new complex includes a common lobby housing a café and bar and a bookstore. The three theaters are the 299-seat End Stage Theatre, modeled on the Peter Norton Space, a proscenium stage; the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, an adaptable space that can be reconfigured for each show for the best performer-audience relationship, seating from 199 to 249 spectators; and the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, resembling a miniature opera house with 191 seats.

On 2 February, I took a tour of the new complex, conducted by David Hatkoff, STC’s Director of Marketing and Audience Services. The theater’s been giving these tours for some time, but only since last month have they been able to do it in a completed building rather than a construction site. (Some of the décor is obviously not yet complete, of course, and there are parts of the space that are still off limits to visitors, but the building is finished. Construction noises can still be heard over the conversations, but some of that, at least, is set-building going on—the set for Albee’s Lady from Dubuque in the End Stage, for instance, is under construction now, even as the play is being rehearsed.

The Pershing Square Signature Center’s entrance is off the 42nd Street sidewalk at the southeast corner of 10th Avenue, under a glass marquee that identifies the theater complex with giant, illuminated signs. The small ground-floor lobby, where the box office is located, is dominated by a plywood-clad staircase leading to the larger upper lobby (5,500 square feet) that contains entries to the three theaters. (There’s also a pair of elevators.) STC intends to use the second-floor lobby, which includes a “concierge desk,” the small bookstore (devoted to STC, its writers-in-residence, and the productions), bar, and café, for informal gatherings. “It’s like a big loft,” said Hatkoff, “with different rooms.” The walls, white-washed with unpainted wood trim, are decorated with black-and-white murals of the playwrights who’ve had seasons at STC. Near the entrance to each theater is a large panel, including a video screen, with all kinds of information, photos, maps, and quotations concerning the play in progress there, the playwright, and the writer’s past work and relevant life experiences. (Outside the theater housing Blood Knot, for example, the panel displays a lot of information on apartheid, the political system against which Fugard worked for a large part of his life and which is at the heart of the 1961 play.) There are also three large interactive video panels (85-inch iPads, Hatkoff called them) that present the history and mission of STC through photos, artist bios, and other background material.

This lobby, through which the actors, crew, playwrights, patrons, and visitors must all pass, is designed as a place where artists and spectators will mingle. “There’s no stage door” at the Signature Center, pointed out Hatkoff, “no back door through which the actors can sneak in and out”; everyone goes through the lobby. STC will use the bookshop to host book club meetings and the café and bar will both be open before and after the shows, so the company expects the lobby to be a hub of activity beyond just waiting for the theaters to open their doors. In fact, the company hopes that the artists, technicians, patrons, and visitors will get into impromptu discussions there. Hatkoff recounted seeing young playwright Will Eno in conversation at the bar with his senior colleague Edward Albee and described an enthusiastic reunion of director Patricia McGregor, in rehearsals for the Resident Five staging of Hurt Village, and Athol Fugard, whose My Children! My Africa! McGregor had directed earlier in her career. “You can be in any of the theaters,” exclaimed Houghton, “and there’s another event—a collective event—that’s happening in the lobby.” The building, open to the public, will be accessible from 10 in the morning until 12 midnight after performances.

The largest of the three new theatres is the End Stage, also the most like the smaller (160 seats) Peter Norton Space. In both houses, the width of the audience seating is the same as the width of the stage so there are no seats with partial views cut off by the edge of the proscenium. Within walls of plywood which Gehry has cracked and shaped, the raked seating rises from the edge of the stage platform. The shaped wall panels are painted to fade to black as they near the stage, creating a transition from the auditorium to the scenic space of the performance. The idea, according to Houghton, is that “as you experience it in the room, one end its [sic] very understated and low key, and as you come to the back of the room it becomes extremely dynamic and sculptural.” The End Stage Theatre débuted on 14 February with Albee’s Lady from Dubuque (on stage until 25 March), to be followed by Lonergan’s new play, scheduled for 15 May to 24 June.

Named for the late playwright who died in January 2011, the subject of signature’s very first one-playwright season and a long-time friend and supporter of the company, the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre is also the company’s most flexible venue. The courtyard style of performance space, with its long history in Western theater history, can be arranged in multiple configurations to accommodate the most appropriate relationship between the performers and the audience. The Linney can be adjusted as an “end stage” theater, a modified thrust stage, a runway, a flat-floor format, and many more formations. The current production, Katori Hall’s Hurt Village, uses an “alley configuration,” with the stage in the center, stretching from one end of the room to the other, and the audience risers on two opposite sides. STC can conform the Linney, inspired by the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe in London, to just about any shape a playwright can devise. The theater has a row of second-level gallery seats overlooking the stage that encourages the performers to work with the whole space and the small house places spectators in a close relationship with the actors. The Linney was inaugurated by the Residency Five production of Hurt Village, which opened on 7 February (running through 18 March) and will later house two of the current Residency One writer’s plays, Fugard’s My Children! My Africa! (1 May-10 June) and The Train Driver (14 August-23 September), the New York première of the South African dramatist’s latest work.

The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre is the most intimate of the three theaters, intended to engulf the audience in the world of the play. Reminiscent of a tiny European opera house, the Griffin, with a single three-row balcony, places the audience as close to the stage as possible, creating an intense and intimate performative experience. Though the seats are fixed, the stage platform is removable so that the performance area resembles a black box. (Blood Knot, for instance, is performed on the floor level, without a stage.) The auditorium has shaped plywood panels which frame the proscenium in overlapping waves and wrap around the front of the balcony creating a ceiling under the lighting bridges above the seats. The panels, acoustically designed to saturate the theater with clear sound, are dark brown, causing them to disappear as the house lights fade to black. “The Jewel Box is my favorite theater,” effused Residency Five playwright Will Eno. “It reminds me of a drawing of a theater that would appear in a children’s book. It’s small and elegant.” The Griffin opened with Fugard’s Blood Knot (the Signature Center’s inaugural production) which will be followed by the world première of Eno’s Title and Deed (8 May-3 June).

Next door to the Linney, the Studio, the second of the new rehearsal spaces (Rehearsal Studio 2), can also serve as a performance venue (as the Studio Theatre). A black-box space, it can seat up to 99 spectators for informal or workshop presentations. STC plans to continue presenting readings in its new home—the Residency Five writers are guaranteed three full productions but there will be readings and workshops in addition—and I imagine those will take place in the Studio. (In fact, I just recently received notice of the first reading, of Eno’s new play, earlier this month in the Studio Theatre.)

All the foregoing are facts and more-or-less objective observations. My subjective impression of the new theater complex at first glance is that it seems a little cold and stiff. In the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout proclaimed, “I don't much care for the high-ceilinged public areas of the Pershing Square Signature Center, which are stark, boxy and uninviting . . .,” though the New York Times’s Charles Isherwood described the complex as “light-filled, handsome and spacious” and added that it’s “a spectacular shot in the arm” for STC. (Other theater reviewers, commenting in their notices for Blood Knot earlier this week, were generally enthusiastic about the Signature Center.) For all the activity STC predicts—hopes—will blossom there, all the white plaster and blond wood, and the big, white rectangular light boxes that illuminate the lobby, it’s not quite a warm space. The acoustics of the theaters all seem fine: we had no trouble hearing Hatkoff from the stages even though, as he proudly proclaimed, he’s not trained in vocal projection. (None of the theaters is wired for amplification except for sound and technical effects: the actors have to rely on their natural equipment.) But in the lobby, which the company intends to use for group events as well as informal gatherings, there were two glaring acoustical impediments. It doesn’t seem that holding a private conversation in the lobby would be hard, but any time someone shifts a chair in the café and bar area, the scraping resounds across the lobby like a magnified nails-on-a-blackboard screech. (Hatkoff, when asked about this annoyance, said the company already had plans to pad the chair legs to prevent the scraping. We’ll see if that’s sufficient.) At the same time, whenever one of the guides or greeters in the theater tried to make a general announcement for the tour participants, unless I was standing within two feet of them, I couldn’t hear a thing they said. If STC plans meetings or lectures in the lobby space, they’ll need to attend to both of those annoying issues—particularly, I’d think, the latter.

In the end, though, a theater’s only real value is how well it serves the art; no one goes to Times Square to hang out at the Winter Garden or the Marquis. “Our intent was to fashion a space that captures the rough-and-ready and experimental spirit of the actors and playwrights that will inhabit it,” said Gehry of the “elegant yet modest new home” he conceived for STC. “The drive for me was to create an intimacy between the performer and the audience, and to create a space that encourages the innovation that Signature is known for.” I’ll soon be seeing two productions in two different houses at the Signature Center, so I’ll get an idea shortly how well Gehry did by the art of theater—if the spaces themselves perform as well as the troupe’s actors, directors, writers, and designers always have. But for now, despite the company’s and Gehry’s wishes, it’s not a place I’d head to to hang out, have drink or a snack, or meet up with friends.

[Though the Signature Center’s correct address is 480 W. 42nd Street, the other parts of the building in which it’s housed have different street addresses. In case anyone tries to look the various premises up (and as a matter of curiosity), MiMa, the residence and commercial building whose entrance is at Dyer Avenue, gets its mail at 450 W. 42nd Street; Yotel New York At Times Square, the European-style “pod” hotel (which isn’t really in Times Square despite its full name), has its entrance around the corner from STC, at 570 10th Avenue. However you look at it, though, they’re all within the same building.

[The names of the Signature’s new theaters, as you might guess, are all a matter of money. The Center’s name, for instance, became the Pershing Square Signature Center in January when the Pershing Square Foundation gave the theater $25 million, the largest gift the foundation, established by hedge fund manager William Ackman and his wife, Karen, ever made to a nonprofit arts organization and the largest private donation Signature received for this project. With the gift went the naming rights. The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre was named for the late playwright when philanthropist and Signature board member Margot Adams made a gift of $5 million to the Signature Center in honor of Romulus Linney. (Adams made the donation in memory of her husband, actor Mason Adams, who died in 2003.) The theater had wanted to name one of its performance spaces for its founding playwright-in-residence because he’d been a strong supporter of the company since its start. Signature named the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre in September when investment banker John A. Griffin also donated $5 million to the company in honor of his mother. Alice Griffin reviewed theater for Variety, Theatre Arts magazine, and WNYC, the NPR outlet in New York City; she taught English and drama at Hunter College, and eventually headed the graduate English Department at Lehman College in the Bronx. Even names for parts of a space go to the highest bidder: the Diller-von Furstenberg Grand Staircase cost the family foundation of Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg $3 million. (The City of New York, which was also instrumental in helping STC secure the space in MiMa, contributed $26.5 million toward the construction of the Signature Center.)

[The website for the company is http://www.signaturetheatre.org and for the Pershing Square Signature Center itself is http://www.signaturecenter.org.]

Lincoln & Howard Theatres: Stages of History

Over the past few months, I’ve written a couple of articles relating to Washington’s Arena Stage (see “Oklahoma!,” 17 October, and “Washington’s Arena Stage: Under Construction,” 26 November). In both of those, I mentioned that while Arena was displaced from its home theater while the company was rebuilding, it staged some of its productions in the historic Lincoln Theatre in downtown D.C. I mentioned in passing that the Lincoln and its sister theater, the Howard, were storied houses in the entertainment history of Washington—and that they had a connection to my family. Let me sketch out that last bit first so you can see why I have an interest in these two old theaters in the inner city of the Nation’s Capital.

I was born in Washington, one of a small percentage of residents in those days who were natives rather than transplants. Until not long ago, maybe two generations, Washington was mostly known as a company town—the “company” being the federal government. Almost everyone who lived in D.C. back then was connected to the government in some way, either as a federal employee, an elected or appointed official, a staffer in some branch of the government, or a government contractor or lobbyist. And that’s not even counting the foreign diplomatic corps. Most of these were transients—though they may have lived in Washington for years or even decades before returning “home” to wherever they came from originally. Unless you were part of the other, hidden segment of Washington’s population, you may never even have met a real Washingtonian—that is, someone who sold cars, painted houses, served food, ran a store, or worked for a company that had no business with the government. Except for a very short time in the early and mid-’60s, I was part of that Washington. (My dad was a Foreign Service officer from 1961 to 1967.) My folks came to the District right after my father mustered out of the army following World War II and married my mom. Mom and Dad were New Yorkers (though my mother’s family had moved to New Jersey when she was a child), but after the war, my grandfather offered his son-in-law and the new husband of one of my mom’s cousins jobs in Washington. It was a great deal, jobs being hard to come by with so many servicemen returning to civilian life. So the two pairs of newly-weds moved south and began careers at District Theaters, a corporation in which my grandfather had a substantial interest. The work of District Theaters Corporation was operating movie theaters in Washington, Richmond, and other cities across the South, mostly in what were then African-American neighborhoods.

The Lincoln and Howard Theatres were the twin flagships of District Theaters, which owned them between about 1946 and 1965. One was next door to and the other around the corner from my dad’s office at 12th and V Streets where I used to visit him when I was little. They were first-run houses, playing the current films from Hollywood. Now, my birthday is on Christmas, which is hell on a kid trying to throw a birthday party—everyone’s away on vacation then. So for a few years we tried celebrating my birthday in the summer; it really didn’t work out much better, but in 1957, that’s what we were doing. So on one June afternoon, I was going to have my belated tenth-birthday party—but I got a special treat first. Before the party, I went downtown with my dad and he took me next door to the Lincoln where he turned me over to the company’s handyman and jack-of-all trades, Joe Mona, who escorted me up to the projection booth where I got to see Disney’s Johnny Tremain while I watched the projectionist run the huge, grainy, charcoal-black machines that projected the movie onto the screen below. I had to watch through the narrow slits through which the projectors’ lenses extended, but I was really much more interested in watching the projectionist operate the machines—they still ran on limelight then and you had to watch through a tiny, thick-paned window in the barrel-shaped side to be sure the flame didn’t burn too bright or go out from mishandling—and change the reels. The projectionist explained to me how he knew when to key up the next reel and when to start the second projector so there wouldn’t be a break in the film’s continuity. He showed me the symbols embedded in the film, little flares in the upper right corner of the frame, that warned him when to get ready and then when to flip the switch. He showed me how to load the reels, how to rewind the film, and how to remove the reels and put them back in their storage cans so they’d be ready for the next showing in the right order. There were three projectors in the booth, but only two were used for a movie; the third was a backup in case something happened to one of them—like the limelight going out. The projectionist used the spare machine to show me how they worked and how to light the limelight, which isn’t easy to do. Lime burns very bright but it’s not easy to ignite, which is why you don’t want it to go out during the run of a film. It also burns very hot, so the little projection booth gets mighty warm during a movie. But I can tell you, I didn’t care one bit—I was having a great time. I think the projectionist also enjoyed showing a wide-eyed kid the wonders of his job—something I don’t imagine he got to do very often. (Years later, a friend of mine described her son’s delight in something or another and her phrase stuck with me; it’s very applicable here: I was in 10-year-old-kid heaven!)

I don’t remember my tenth birthday party later that day. It may have been a pool party, which we did once or twice during the years we had my party in the summer, or it may have been a party in our backyard at home, or even in Rock Creek Park at the bottom of our street. I don’t recall. But I still remember that morning—the movie’s listed as 80 minutes, a short feature, but my recollection is that it filled my day! Actually, I don’t remember the movie all that much, either—but I remember the projection booth. It’s over half a century later and I still recall the experience vividly so you know I was impressed. That’s what the Lincoln Theatre means to me.

The Lincoln, located as 1215 U Street, N.W., between 12th and 13th Street, opened in 1922 to serve the African-American audiences of the District, which was then a segregated city. (Washington, the majority of whose population was black, was under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress, in particular the House and Senate Committees on the District of Columbia, which controlled the city’s administration, budget, and laws. The memberships of the prestigious committees were largely Southern Democrats, known as Dixiecrats, who prided themselves on keeping the races separated.) It was the center of an African-American cultural revival that predated the Harlem Renaissance. Poet Langston Hughes spoke of the importance of the theater in a 1949 poem called “Lincoln Theatre”:

The head of Lincoln looks down from the wall
While movies echo dramas on the screen.
The head of Lincoln is serenely tall
Above a crowd of black folk, humble, mean.
The movies end. The lights flash gaily on.
The band down in the pit bursts into jazz.
The crowd applauds a plump brown-skinned bleach blonde
Who sings the troubles every woman has.
She snaps her fingers, slowly shakes her hips,
And cries, all careless-like from reddened lips!
De man I loves has
Gone and done me wrong . . .While girls who wash rich white folks clothes by day
And sleek-haired boys who deal in love for pay
Press hands together, laughing at her song.

Billed as The Jewel on U, the Lincoln’s first offerings were silent movies and vaudeville but in 1928 it was wired for sound and installed a ballroom, the Lincoln Colonnade, in an effort to become a grand movie palace. The theater and the Colonnade, where even President Franklin D. Roosevelt had his birthday parties, were considered the center of Washington’s “Black Broadway,” a title coined by singer Pearl Bailey, eventually hosting other performers such as native Washingtonian Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughn, among many others. In 1952, the theater was equipped with a television-projection system to show prizefights.

After Washington desegregated in the mid-’50s, the Lincoln struggled and the Colonnade was demolished to save maintenance costs. Around that time, it ceased offering live stage shows and became solely a movie theater. Along with the Howard and much of the neighborhood, the Lincoln was badly damaged in the riots that followed the 4 April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis and it fell into disrepair. The movie house was divided into two theaters in 1978, renamed the Lincoln Twin, and started showing all-night movies on weekends, attracting large audiences. In 1983, however, the Lincoln was sold and closed for renovation, remaining dark for many years.

Ten years later, the theater was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and the restoration was completed with financial assistance from the District of Columbia, returning the building to much of its original eclectic appearance with restored Victorian, Neo-Classical, and Art-Deco details. The 1250-seat Lincoln reopened on 4 February 1994 with a performance of Barry Scott's Ain't Got Long to Stay Here, the playwright-actor’s monodrama about Martin Luther King, Jr. From 21 February to 5 March 1995, Lincoln Theatre hosted Where Eagles Fly, a play by local writer Carole Mumin that tells the story of Ostray Brown, an elderly activist who fought the redevelopment of the Lincoln Theatre that targeted the neighborhood for demolition, and sought to preserve the neighborhood and its history.

Since its reopening, the Lincoln, now owned by the city, has hosted theater and music performances as well as political events such as the mayor's annual State of the District address. Musical shows have included Cassandra Wilson, Quincy Jones, Chuck Brown, Wynton Marsalis, and, in 2005, the first annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. Other performers at the Lincoln Theatre have included singer Brian Stokes Mitchell and comedian Dick Gregory. Starting in September 2008 with Carrie Fisher’s one-woman, autobiographical performance Wishful Drinking, the Arena Stage began producing some of its season at the Lincoln while its home theater in Southwest was being reconstructed. Other Arena shows produced at the Lincoln included Regina Taylor’s Crowns (27 March-26 April 2009) and Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies starring Maurice Hines (9 April-6 June 2010), which became the company’s highest-grossing production in its history. In recent years, the theater has struggled financially and has relied on city funding to keep the wrecking ball at bay. Other theater troupes are also using the Lincoln for their productions and the theater can be rented. The Lincoln Theatre is considered an important part of the city’s black cultural history and efforts continue to try to preserve it.

The Howard Theatre, at 620 T Street, N.W., opened in 1910 and was placed on the NRHP in 1974. Before the Apollo in New York (1913) or the Regal in Chicago (1928), the Howard, named for its proximity to Washington‘s traditionally black university, was an important entertainment venue for black audiences and performers. Seating 1200, the lavishly decorated theater boasted a balcony and box seats as well as the orchestra. The exterior was decorated with Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance, and Neo-Classical elements, and the building was topped by a concrete statue of Apollo playing the lyre. Called The Theater of the People, the Howard hosted both the Lafayette Players of Harlem (1916–1932), Anita Bush’s pioneering African-American theater troupe, and the Howard University Players (founded in 1925), the university’s student drama group. Entertainers shared the stage with illustrious speakers like Booker T. Washington and the theater was also an important stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit, the black vaudeville tour.

When the Depression struck in 1929, the theater became a church for a couple of years and then, in 1931, returned to entertainment with an appearance of Washington‘s favorite son, Duke Ellington, and his band. In the ’30s, the Howard, under the management of Shep Allen, also hosted an amateur contest that boosted performers like Billy Eckstine and Ella Fitzgerald to illustrious careers in show business. In the 1940s, the building was remodeled in a more contemporary style and lost much of its ornate façade, but it was still a hot spot. During World War II, FDR attended balls at the Howard featuring entertainment by Danny Kaye, Abbott and Costello, and Cesar Romero, among others. During that decade, Pearl Bailey made her début at the Howard and “Pigmeat” Markham was a popular and frequent figure on its stage. In the ’50s and ’60s, the theater became a venue for rock ’n’ roll and R&B, with appearances by important figures such as Buddy Holly, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Sammy Davis, Jr., James Brown and the Flames, Otis Redding, Lena Horne, and Lionel Hampton, as well as Motown and Stax recording stars.

In the late 1960s, when I was in college in Virginia, just a few hours south of D.C., I was the social director of my fraternity for a year. My dad, who’d left District Theaters by this time, was still in contact with his old colleagues, however. Since the Howard, which still had live shows when I was growing up, unlike the Lincoln, had to be booked by someone in the management, I asked my dad to put me onto someone who could help me book good and interesting bands that maybe hadn’t made the rounds of all the colleges in the District, Maryland, and Virginia yet. I was able to do just that—my frat had the rep that year for really good house parties because I went outside the usual box for our entertainment, including one all-female rock combo (they were really popular on my all-men’s campus!) and an unknown soul group called Willie and the Hand Jives, who tore up the joint. (The 1958 Johnny Otis song from which the group took its name had faded from our memories by 1967 and the Eric Clapton cover didn’t appear until 1974, but I swear half the students I met for a week after that party were humming “Hand Jive.”) So I got a little personal boost from the Howard, however obliquely.

Just as it had for the Lincoln Theatre, desegregation in Washington took its toll: the U Street Corridor, as it’s known now, had been a place of class and culture for the black community and the city in general, but the inner city started to become less and less desirable and deteriorated into a derelict slum that few wanted to visit, especially at night. The same unrest in 1968 that shuttered the Lincoln closed the Howard in 1970. It reopened in 1973 with the involvement of the Howard Theatre Foundation and in 1975, comedian Redd Foxx and singer Melba Moore were featured on its stage; “Pigmeat” Markham also made a return to popularity in the ‘60s and ‘70s after his most famous routines were performed by Sammy Davis on TV’s Laugh-In. The theater finished the decade with performances of the pop bands of the era, but in 1980 the Howard closed its doors again, this time for three decades. (An episode of the 2000-2004 TV drama The District, which starred Craig T. Nelson as the new police chief of Washington, had scenes taped in front of the shuttered Howard Theatre.) Plans had been to reopen the newly restored and up-dated Howard, its long-missing statue of Apollo replaced with The Jazz Man by artist Brower Hatcher, a modern aluminum-mesh figure lit internally by LED’s, on the theater’s 100th birthday in 2010, but that goal was missed. The current date for the reopening is April 2012.

The Howard and the Lincoln Theatres are part of the city’s and the community’s collective historical memories and there always seems to be someone who’s stood in the way of the developer’s bulldozer. The whole of downtown D.C. is being reinvigorated and reclaimed one neighborhood at a time—14th Street, Adams-Morgan, Logan Circle, the U Street Corridor—and there’s more than just hope that both theaters will survive and return to a 21st-century version of their former glory as palaces of entertainment and local culture. It helps to remember that the historic Ford’s Theatre, closed for over a century after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, was restored to theatrical life in 1968. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the District has developed a vibrant cultural life that didn’t exist in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, giving some support to the revival of these two historical houses. Obviously, it takes capital (no pun intended: capital in the Capital), but that’s all it takes: the will seems to be there. My mom still passes on any news regarding the Lincoln and the Howard—even though my dad left District Theaters in 1961 and the corporation, which had sold the theaters in about 1965, went out of business long ago. For personal reasons, however, I fervently hope the preservationists will beat the developers this time.

[It may be helpful, or at least interesting, to provide an elementary précis of the political history of Washington. Unique in the United States, the status of the District of Columbia was established when the city was founded in 1791. Congress approved the creation of the federal district, separate from any state, according to Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution. In fear that the residents of the federal city might become subject to the pressures of the politicians and parties that ruled in the city, Washingtonians were denied the right to vote for the President and Vice President of the United States and had no representation in the House of Representatives or the Senate or elected city administration. Washingtonians, however, pay the same taxes New Yorkers, Californians, or Texans do. The laws of the District and the administrators of the city were ordained by Congress, principally the members of the House and Senate Committees on the District of Columbia, which also determined the city’s budget and appropriated the funds the city could spend on roads, schools, police, or firefighters. Washington, D.C., is tantamount to America’s last colony and there is an active, though unsuccessful, D.C. statehood movement.

[This remained the status for 170 years, until 1961 when the passage of the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution granted citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote in presidential elections. (The rules for primary elections are determined by the political parties so Washingtonians had been allowed to vote for candidates for several years, just as Puerto Ricans and Samoans can.) The District was assigned three electoral votes, equivalent to the number of senators (two) and representatives (one) it would have if it were a state. In 1971, the District was allowed to elect and seat a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives; the delegate, currently Eleanor Holmes Norton, may vote in committee—she is ex officio a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform which in 1987 subsumed the House District Committee—but she has no vote on the floor of the House, though she may speak in the chamber. In 1973, Congress passed the Home Rule Act giving the District political control over much of its own affairs. For the first time, Washingtonians could elect their own mayor (the first one was, ironically, Walter E. Washington) and city council. Through the mayor, who appoints a cabinet like most city executives across the U.S., the District also gained local control of most of its services like police, fire, education, motor vehicles, building regulation, and so on. (This is not to say that the District has always had an efficient and corruption-free government—but it was nevertheless in control of its own day-to-day affairs.) The mayor and the council may set taxes and establish a budget for the city, but those actions must be approved by Congress. In 1990, the office of Shadow Senator was established for the District of Columbia. With less authority than the delegate in the House, shadow senators have no voting power in Congress and aren’t sworn into office, though they are addressed as “Senator,” especially locally. The office is largely ceremonial, but the position is considered prestigious; the first two Shadow Senators from the District of Columbia were Jesse Jackson (1991-1996) and Florence Pendleton (1991-2007); their successors are Paul Strauss and Michael D. Brown, respectively.

[Like Delegate Norton, the shadow senators are all Democrats, as have been all the city’s mayors. In fact, that Washington is overwhelmingly Democratic in voter registration is one important reason the movement for statehood or some similar status that would grant the citizens of D.C. representation in Congress has been unsuccessful so far. A move like that would have to be approved by Congress, as well as supported by a Constitutional Amendment, and that would almost certainly mean two more Democratic seats in the Senate and one more in the House. Republican members of Congress resist any increase in the number of Democrats in the legislature unless they can balance it with an equal increase in Republican membership. (The same impediment blocks serious consideration of the admission of Puerto Rico as a state: it, too, is overwhelmingly Democratic. That also precludes the pairing of D.C. statehood with admission of Puerto Rico at the same time the way Democratic Hawaii was admitted to the Union only after Republican Alaska was admitted.) Further complicating the issue in the past was the fact that service on the two District Committees was considered prestigious and no senator or representative wanted to vote him- or herself off a cushy panel like that. It was a no-risk assignment: nothing the members did affected a constituent back home—the residents of the District didn’t vote for any of the legislators controlling their fates—and they could always go home and brag how they kept the budget in Washington low and cut its appropriations. (In the bad old days of Jim Crow, the committee members from the South could also go back and show how they held the line against desegregation in the Nation’s Capital. That was always worth a few hundred votes.) Mostly, members of Congress just like having control over the District and they’re loathe to give it up.

[Desegregation in Washington is also a complex story. Officially, the District of Columbia was desegregated legally in 1917, but the law largely went unenforced. Washington was and remains a southern city—it’s below the Mason-Dixon Line—and even without the delegates from the southern states, the population of the city is southern by culture. Remember that Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy, is just across the river; the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, is less than three hours’ drive away. On the other side of the city is Maryland, a border state in the Civil War. That means it didn’t officially take sides, but what it really meant is that it sympathized with the South but wouldn’t commit to secession. (John Wilkes Booth, the Confederate-sympathizing actor who shot President Lincoln, was a Marylander. Actors could travel back and forth across the battle lines, and there is much evidence that Booth had served as a Confederate spy, carrying messages and intelligence from the North to the military leaders of the South.) So when Washington began to desegregate in fact, it happened piecemeal: federal offices in 1948, the National Theatre in 1952, the restaurants in 1953, parks and recreation facilities and then the schools in 1954, and so on. The laws of the District, remember, weren’t written by Washingtonians then: they were made by Congress. (This same fact had other effects on city life: the liquor tax was kept very low so booze was cheap in the District and taxi fares were kept low by mandating a zone system instead of a metered time-and-distance system. Even a bad system can have good results.)

[In the days when District Theaters first owned the Lincoln and the Howard Theatres, Washington lived under this system. As was customary in those days, the executive leadership of District Theaters Corporation was white. My grandfather was the chairman of the board, his niece’s husband was president of the company, and my father was the vice president. Many key employees, however, were black, which was not always common practice in Jim Crow America. Shep Allen, who managed the Howard for decades, was a beloved and honored figure in the community and a significant figure in the cultural force that the theater represented. Like many of the theaters’ managers, he was an African American. (Audiences, of course, were largely black since the theaters were intended to serve that community, but the performers with national followings, especially the later rock and pop singers and comics like Foxx and Sammy Davis, attracted mixed crowds.) I can’t say that District Theaters broke any ground for integration in the ’50s, but it didn’t exploit the situation, either. Our theaters were well appointed and maintained and showed the best movies available at the same ticket prices as the other chains in town. As I understood it later, particularly at the time of the death of my cousin’s father in 1975, the company was well regarded both in the business community of Washington and among the city’s African Americans.]