Liberty Theatre, North Bend, OR, Phase 1 and counting.....

The Liberty Theatre, in North Bend, was designed by Tourtellotte & Hummel, of Boise and Portland, and opened on Easter Sunday 1924.  It cost $50,000, and was just one of the fine concrete, fireproof, structures built in that city during North Bend boom of the early 1920s.  The Liberty showed movies through WWII but was closed when the newer, wide-screen, Port opened.  It sat vacant for a time before its owners leased the building to Little Theater on the Bay (LTOB), a Coos County-based community theater group.  LIBERTY  LTOB purchased the building in the 1970s, paid off the mortgage in 1996 and even bought the lot next door. 

Coos County, so isolated for so many years before the coastal bridges and highway was completed, developed a rather amazing tradition of high quality local theater.  In those early years there just wasn’t much entertainment there and people, talented people, learned to entertain themselves.  LTOB is now the second oldest continuously operated theater group in Oregon, and has put on productions for more than six decades.  Their alumni include people who went on to Hollywood fame (Roy Scheider), people who perform at OSF, and yes, just as likely the local teacher, the guy that works at the mill, or youngsters from area schools.  It’s community at its best.  The quality is rather astounding.

Focusing on theater, LTOB lucked out with the Liberty Theatre but it was never exactly their primary focus.  As long as the roof didn’t leak, the power worked, and the acoustics were good (they are great) the theatre was just a building.  There has been an on-off interest in new digs, maybe restoring the Liberty or maybe replacing it, but nothing much happened.  Perhaps inspired by the work on the Egyptian Theatre, just down the road in Coos Bay, the LTOB Board asked us to come out and take a look.

I had driven by the Liberty for years and never really noticed it.  The rather monochromatic, (I called it Taupe-on-Taupe) faded, paint scheme didn’t exactly draw the eye and, located at a curve on Sherman Street at the south part of downtown North Bend, the natural inclination is to look away, toward the road.  Certainly I'd not been inside and, frankly, when the chance finally arrived this Spring, I didn’t expect to find much.  I was wrong.

The interior has much of its original design…the lighting and even the seats are all still there, probably not much different from what they were in 1924.  There has been some change and loss (the painted murals are hidden) and there’s stage lighting and sound from the conversion to live theater, but there's lots to work with.

The building is in good shape, mostly with deferred maintenance outdated systems, but nothing major.  LTOB continues to put on plays and the magic on stage buys a lot of forgiveness for the limited services, lack of indoor ADA restrooms and small lobby and concession stand, but certainly the Liberty, a phenomenal Moorish design, could be so much more than it is.  I couldn't see any reason not to rehab it and make it what it should be.

LTOB decided to launch a fund-raising effort.  The City of North Bend’s Urban Renewal Agency very generously stepped up to the table with a major (like 6-figures major) matching gift and over the next few years, in a series of phases, the Liberty Theatre will get the attention that its needs.  We’ll bring the “show to the sidewalk,” and give LTOB the venue that their tradition of quality productions deserve.  

Phase 1 was painting the exterior and having people notice the building and boy, do they ever!  We did some testing to determine the color history of the exterior and came up with a historically-based design to support the Moorish style T&H chose in 1924.  Next up, new restrooms and some lobby areas on the lot to the south, getting rid of the oh-so-lovely Sani-Can and then later a new marquee, some storage and rehearsal spaces, new systems, and more.  Stay tuned!

Artifacts Repatriated-The Holly Gets its Niche(s) Back!

Medford’s Holly Theatre HollyTheatre has had an interesting history from the start.  Construction began in Fall 1929, just before the Black Tuesday, not a day of post-Turkey sales, but rather the collapse of the stock market and the beginning of what is still America’s worst financial crisis.  The local owners soldiered on, and the theater opened in August 1930.  With 1200 seats, it was by far the largest theatre in southern Oregon.  For the next five-plus decades, with varying success, the Holly was one of the leading movie venues in Medford.  With its huge single rake of seating, there wasn’t a bad seat to be had.  You went to the Holly for what today would be termed “Blockbusters.”  Among the latter movies shown there, which I actually saw there, was The Return of the Jedi.

I have written here before about the circuitous path the Holly has taken since it was closed as a theatre in 1986 and needn't beat that horse again.  Two Theatres Let me just say that I hope that Spokane or wherever former SOU president Mary Cullinan heads next isn’t in need of a visionary.  (cite). 

JeffersonLive is moving forward with its plans for the Holly’s rehabilitation as a performing arts center.  That took a major step forward this week with the repatriation of a truckload of original decorative material that was, um, “salvaged” from the theatre in the mid-1990s and has been in storage since.  Essentially a previous owner of the building has the crazy idea of gutting the auditorium and turning it into some sort of atrium-based office complex.  (Really, I’m not making this up).  As that process unfolded, a number of decorative items were offered for sale and many, including all or parts of most of the cool wall niches, were removed from the building.  Naturally the office idea fell through, that owner (thankfully) sold out, and the building sat for 20 years with little change.  Remaining niches were still there, with gaping wounds where the others had been removed.

As early as 2011 negotiations to repurchase many of the removed items were underway (that's part of a pipe niche, above, in the storage building.  You can see the remaining original in the upper photo).  Unfortunately that process stalled, despite our best efforts.  The owner had parts or all of the missing pipe niche, from right next to the proscenium, all of one of the window niches (including the 3D spiral columns), the wrought iron screen from a balcony niche, the missing cast shell from a shell niche and even the fourth (and last) small chandelier from the auditorium.  

Earlier this month JeffersonLive got one of those great phones calls out of the blue.  An auctioneer, Wayne Liska, of Grants Pass, had been charged with disposing of items for the owner and thankfully realized they were from the Holly, belonged back at the Holly, and was more than fair in making sure that we were able to acquire them.  They were delivered last week, to great relief.  We’re hoping that there will be other pieces as Mr. Liska continues to work through the storage building where this stuff was kept.  Either way, with few exceptions, the Holly has now been reunited with one example of most of the major decorative elements that were part of its 1930s interior design.  While we’d be thrilled to have all the original elements, having one of a design makes it a whole lot easier to recreate the rest.  I think I heard the building sigh a little in relief when all this material was being delivered last Tuesday.  I know that I certainly did.

The Egyptian Theatre Rehab is Underway!

The Egyptian Theatre, in Coos Bay, has come roaring back from the brink and is set to reopen sometime in 2014.  As you may recall, the city-owned building was in operation until 2011, managed by the Egyptian Theater Preservation Alliance, when a very conservative structural report resulted in its immediate closure.  Local wags wailed about government waste and the city’s investment in a “dangerous building” and for awhile it really looked as if the future for this amazing survivor was going to include demolition.

Instead, in a patient, methodical, fashion, the City and EPTA have gone about raising funds and crafting a phased rehabilitation plan that will 1) see the building re-opened after some structural and systems upgrades, to be followed by 2) exterior rehabilitation and finally 3) the interior rehab (which is mostly cleaning...the interior is absolutely incredible).  Phase 1 is underway, with new wooden beams going into the fly loft, metal connections, and reinforcement to the rear wall, along with new electric service, upgraded sewer connection, and two unisex ADA restrooms.  

  

Not all the work in Phase 1 is behind the scenes though.  Several of the absolutely incredible original light fixtures are in the process of restoration, to be reinstalled in theatre.  They have suffered various indignities over the years, with the original mica bottoms replaced by plastic (and held on in some cases by wingnuts!)  and the hand painted paper shades having faded and changed colors over the years.  We’ll take them back to the original, when they were a stunning reddish tone, with silver highlights.  And the cobras, with their polychrome paint and ivory-white eyes, offer all sorts of possibilities for future use too… Stay tuned!

Phoenix Update-Devenney-Steadman RIP

Well, you can’t say we didn’t try.  When last we left the Devenney-Steadman House, the Phoenix City Council had approved its demolition but the owners were willing to wait awhile before actually razing this fine 19^th century house, in case somebody wanted to move it.  The Phoenix Urban Renewal Agency put together a plan PHURA that would have relocated the Steadman House to a prominent corner lot on Main Street, adjacent to a historic building on the north (the Phoenix Grange) and the Phoenix City Hall, on the west.  The Devenney-Steadman House would have been restored for use as PHURA’s offices, including a compatible addition to the rear for meeting room use, and the entire thing, including purchase of the land, could be paid for by the saved rental on PHURA’s offices over the remaining 15 years of life.  Phoenix got a great addition to its Main Street, saved money, created an asset for the community’s future use or sale AND undertook what would have amounted to a demonstration project that rehabilitation is not only cost effective but cool.  And Phoenix is a city that has little track record when it comes to historic preservation and re-use so who better to lead the way than local government?

On Monday of this week the issue came before the Phoenix City Council, who needed to approve PHURA’s expenditure to purchase the land.  To be clear, they didn’t need to provide any funding, they needed to approve PHURA using its own funds to purchase land and restore the Devenney-Steadman House instead of wasting it on rent.  Guess what they did?

By a vote of 3-3, with the Mayor voting to break the tie in the negative, the City of Phoenix formally thumbed its official nose at this win-win-win project.  If I were a betting man, I would not be betting on the future of restoration in Phoenix, especially the Devenney-Steadman House.  Sigh.

You can read the local newspaper report here:  Mail Tribune

Covered Bridges-Managing Change/Carrying Traffic

Although the field and much of its infrastructure is called “preservation” the reality is that a large percentage of what is reviewed by the State Historic PRESERVATION Office, or NPS’s Technical PRESERVATION Services division, is better described as “rehabilitation.”  Rehab, in this world, involves transforming a building or structure to a new use or updating a continuing use in a manner that is respectful of history.

Determining where the line is between respect and remuddling is often subjective and it can even be a source of disagreement among “preservation” professionals.  I recall a project from years ago in which a pioneer era structure was to be rebuilt (from the ground up, it had been entirely lost) and there was considerable and heated debate about whether the sills and floor beams had to be hand-hewn timbers or if they could be the less-expensive and likely more durable, pressure-treated lumber.  On the one hand nobody was ever going to see the beams, beneath the floor boards, and on the other the original did have hand-hewn timbers.  I thought the former was nice but unnecessary and pushed for pressure-treated.  Others thought the presence of PT amounted to sacrilege.

“Preservation” v. “Rehabilitation” has reared its head in on-going discussions surrounding covered bridges.  The small number of covered bridges that survive in Oregon (about 50 out of more than 400 we once had) are beloved in their communities (and Oregon, despite the losses, still has more covered bridges than any state west of the Mississippi).  The issue, simply put, stems from the undeniable fact that there are good reasons why Oregon’s public works and state transportation officials have replaced covered bridges over the years.  Wood over water, in western Oregon, isn’t a great match.  Wood rots, and it needs to be replaced.  Concrete may not have as much character, but in times of diminishing budgets, it’s a heck of a lot easier to maintain.

To compensate for that fact, there are special sources of money to keep covered bridges standing, and that makes sense not just to keep them as functional elements of the transportation system and our history, but from an economic development and tourism standpoint.  For example, I was at a covered bridge a few weeks ago, the McKee Bridge, way out in the Applegate Valley.  They have a register for visitors to sign.  There were people from all over North America that had driven 30-40 miles off the Interstate to see that bridge.  That’s a good thing, and justifies the expense of retaining these iconic structures.  It's rare to visit a covered bridge that somebody doesn't stop by to take a photo, check it out, or lay out a picnic or something.  Oregonians, Americans, love covered bridges.

But keeping them standing requires regular maintenance. And, at the same time that public money is drying up, the quality of timbers is declining from the old growth that bridge-builders used in the early 20^th century.  That means that even if you can get the large timber members needed to build certain elements in a covered bridge, they don’t have the same carrying capacity of the old growth, because the wood isn’t as good.  And then, of course, modern vehicles, especially trucks, are much much larger than they were in 1930 or 1940, so if a bridge is to carry legal loads as part of the transportation system, the new timbers ought be carrying MORE weight than the original design. 

All of this has led bridge designers and public works officials to look for new ways to upgrade, to rehab, Oregon’s covered bridges while meeting the requirements of the traffic system AND honoring history.  That’s a fine balance.  One method, an easy method, would be to replace the floor system of a covered bridge with steel or even concrete, transforming the truss into what would amount to a decorative feature.  Nobody wants to do that (though there are many many covered bridges with concrete approach spans in Oregon…. There was a time when the approaches weren’t considered historic at all).  Another method is to replace the original timber elements with new timbers, up-sized to increase capacity, but that too changes the character of the bridge, even where such material is available (YOU try to find a 20” x 18” timber beam 60’ feet long!).  In some cases original timbers can be strengthened by post-tensioning, the installation of small steel cables or rods that tighten the truss and increase its carrying capacity.  

But the most typical method, at least of late, is to replace damaged members (typically floorbeams and stringers that are below the roadway) with glu-lams, laminated wood that is matched in dimension to the original feature.  Glu-lams are just little pieces of wood, usually 2x, stacked, or glued (laminated) to create a single, larger, member.  Because of the stacked lamination and the multiple grain patterns, glu-lams actually carry more load than a single, solid, timber of the same size.  Of course replacing original, solid, timber elements with glu-lams is a change to the original design, justified to keep the bridge standing perhaps, but still a change.  There are differing opinions, from a technical standpoint, about whether that change is appropriate or not.  I don’t think most people even notice, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.