AUGUST 2006 » book review

The Shows Go On

Theaters
by Craig Morrison
W.W. Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks in Architecture, Design and Engineering, New York, NY; 2006
398 pp.; hardcover; 1,200 b&w illus.; $75
ISBN 0-393-73108-1

Reviewed by Eve M. Kahn

You couldn't make this stuff up. The stories of how theaters get built, used and lost are often larger than life. How about Horace Tabor, the Denver mining tycoon who put up a Romanesque opera house in 1881 but was soon scandalously divorced and broke and then finally rehabilitated in 1898 as the city postmaster? Or how about the Manhattan showman Oscar Hammerstein, who bankrupted a year-old theater complex in 1896 and then immediately built a 1,000-seater across the street? In Hammerstein's new roof garden complete with faux farm, according to preservation architect Craig Morrison, "a cow provided fresh milk and a lascivious trained monkey lifted ladies' skirts."Like I said, you couldn't make this up.

Morrison has managed to squeeze many lively tales between 1,200 images culled from the Library of Congress's files. Norton has published two similarly comprehensive titles, on barns and canals, and lighthouses will be next. Morrison's Herculean work, despite some minor recordkeeping flaws, will speak to a wide audience. Anyone studying or restoring historic theaters, adapting them to new uses or building new ones needs this reference. Theaters used to come in so many flavors and textures. Why are all of them – except for a handful of tradition-inspired halls, mostly by architect David Schwarz – so smooth, bland and Scandinavian blonde now?

Morrison's joyously eclectic sampling spans chronologically from Philadelphia's 1794 colonnaded Chestnut Street Theater to New York's 1962 Loew's Tower East, designed by Emery Roth & Sons. The author also explores theaters' cousins, such as circus tents, stadiums, expo pavilions, and light-bulb-studded amusement parks. He found interesting examples in every state, except New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming. Mainstream star architects like Louis Sullivan and Joseph Urban appear alongside theater specialists (John Eberson, Thomas W. Lamb, the Rapp brothers) as well as underappreciated provincials such as Idaho's Tourtellotte & Hummel and West Virginia's Mills & Millspaugh.

The images, nearly all well reproduced, are mostly the products of that enlightened government documentation drive, founded in 1935: the Historic American Buildings Survey. HABS photographers have produced extraordinarily artful compositions. The program's longtime chief photographer, Jack E. Boucher, for instance, has captured horseshoe balconies in dazzling wide-angle shots and focused straight-facedly on details as absurd as dachshund-shaped light-fixture brackets. Morrison has complemented the HABS riches with troves of vintage advertisements, newspaper illustrations, drawings – such as Benjamin Henry Latrobe's 1798 proposals for a domed hall in Richmond – and WPA photographers' haunting shots of Jim Crow segregated theaters.

A dozen pithy essays are scattered throughout the book, explaining how social and technological shifts have shaped theaters. By the 1840s, enclosed balcony boxes were deemed anti-egalitarian and undemocratic, but discriminatory separate entrances for anyone buying cheap seats persisted through the 19th century. In early 20th century cinemas, vestigial box seats flanked the stage; they were fake – behind them lay elaborately screened organ pipes, providing soundtracks for silent movies. Early moviegoers also enjoyed flattened balconies, with all seats directly facing the screens and walls swathed in exotic mish-mashed ornament. Among Morrison's more colorful terms for theater décor are "Sino-Venetian splendor,""Indo-Moorish fantasy"and "Assyrianized Palladian delight."

These dreamlands have proven fragile and ephemeral, and especially susceptible to fire and obsolescence. Patrons used to be allowed to smoke, and asbestos safety curtains couldn't always control sparks from electrical equipment. And whenever town populations start to shrink, theaters are among the first businesses to die. They can languish empty for decades; Morrison describes them as "notoriously hard to make into anything else. Their windowless envelopes, sloping floors, stepped balconies, and the specialized construction of their stages get in the way of most non-theater uses."He has nonetheless found examples of conversions into warehouses, stores, churches, a fire station, a museum, a motel and a bus terminal.

Even more improbably, Morrison knows of resourceful theater impresarios as far back as the 1880s who pioneered adaptive reuse. A farm-tools store in Iowa, a haberdashery in Washington, D.C, a city hall in Frankfort, KY, and a gas-storage tank in Boston have all become transporting venues for movies or live performances.

Despite Morrison's thoroughness, some readers will find lapses in the coverage. Why does he describe but not illustrate some of the grandest 1920s theaters, like Detroit's Fox and Houston's Majestic? Where, asks the New York-phile, are Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and an Alhambra/Angkor Wat-inspired movie palace in upper Manhattan now used by an evangelist named Reverend Ike? Morrison doesn't always note which buildings still stand, and some barebones captions give only the address, opening date, seating capacity and architect.

The index is somewhat frustrating as well, but not through any fault of Morrison's. He lists the theater names within geographical categories, but some establishments have changed names again and again. Woe to the poor researcher interested in a lower Manhattan minstrel hall first known as Buckley's Hall, and later by 17 other names including Palace of Mirrors and Heller's Salon Diabolique. The CD-ROM accompanying the book doesn't much help sort out the confusion; the disk contains all photos as tiffs, but only titled with their illustration number from the book.

A good Googling will be needed to round out Morrison's impressive research, as will a browse through the Library of Congress's website. (The book and disk supply the relevant URLs.) The government even generously lets us download razor-sharp, lengthily captioned HABS photos. Blow them up poster size if you need ideas for, say, an ADA pathway or new marquee or ticket kiosk at a theater under renovation. Keep the files on hand, just in case some well-heeled patron for new theater construction shows up with visions of perhaps "Sino-Venetian splendor"or "Assyrianized Palladian delight." TB

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