A brief history of the Colonial Theatre

12:00AM / Monday, March 25, 2002Print Story | Email Story

The newspapers said it was the most splendid gathering place from Worcester to Albany; more stars of the American and European stage appeared here than in any other place still standing. J. B. McElfatrick, the premier theater designer of the 19th and 20th centuries, designed its interior. Aunt Jemima and former vice president Dan Quayle have both landed on the heliport on the roof. Dona Beck, community president of Banknorth Massachusetts, joined members of the Taconic High School social studies faculty, and teachers in math, business and science, on a tour of Pittsfieldâ€™s Colonial Theatre, with Robert Boland of the Colonial Theatre Association. Boland spoke of the theaterâ€™s 99-year history. He brought out pictures of the original Colonial Players and programs from the theaterâ€™s days as a stop on the touring circuit from New York, Boston, and Europe: Carmen, and Madame Sarah Bernhard and her own company from the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris, performing Jeanne Dâ€™arc, and many others. â€œJust having all this is such a gift,â€ Beck said. Beck had come to present the latest contribution toward the effort to restore the Colonial theater. Banknorth has followed a previous $25,000 gift with a pledge of $100,000, which it will make good over several years. She said she hoped it would be the first of many contributions from the community, to encourage the growth of education and the arts in Pittsfield. She presented the first check to Susan Sperber, acting executive director of the Colonial Theatre Association, and Joyce Bernstein, president of the board of trustees, on March 13 in the tiers above the old Colonial stage. Pittsfield Mayor Sara Hathaway, CTA members, teaches from Pittsfield schools, and Steve Miller, who runs the Miller arts supply store in the theater building, gathered for the presentation. Hathaway, who said she was â€œrunning out of superlatives to describe the theaterâ€ and its importance to Pittsfield, thanked Beck. She recalled a letter, one of many the Pittsfield Gazette solicited from school children, to make suggestions to the new mayor. The problem with Pittsfield, the letter said, was that it had too many banks. Banknorthâ€™s support of the Colonial Theatre proved just how vital a role banks could play in the cityâ€™s health. And Hathaway thanked Steven Miller and his father George, who have preserved the Colonial Theatre building since 1942. â€œThis theater has been sustained by the Miller family for these 50 years,â€ she said, â€œand perhaps it is now ready for statehood.â€ The theater restoration effort has had almost as varied a history as the theater itself. In 1971, Robert Boland became chair of the Pittsfield bicentennial committee. He originally wanted to restore the theater for the bicentennial celebration. Many contractors were willing to donate labor for the bicentennial. The project would have cost $68,000. (It cost $70,000 to build the theater in 1903.) The city did not approve it, though. Now the cost of renovating the theater house and stage alone will cost $8 million, Boland said. Added costs for larger space, parking and the purchase of property could easily double that. Boland believes nothing less than a full and accurate restoration is worth the effort. â€œIf you want people to still be coming in 50 years, it has to be done right,â€ he said. He convinced former first lady Hilary Clinton, on a similar tour, that the theater was worth $400,000 from the Save Americaâ€™s Treasures fund. The Massachusetts Historical Commission has given $2.5 million. In 1995, Morelli & Sons did a study on the cost to restore the theater. They also decided the project was too expensive, and shelved it. The Colonial Theatre Association formed to continue the investigation. The city council reported 61 percent of the population was against restoring the theater, so the CTA began offering tours; they thought if people could see the building, might change their minds. They did. The next year, 89 percent of Pittsfieldâ€™s citizens were in favor of restoring the theater. CTA has continued the tours for four years, on summer Saturdays. Boland said on three occasions, people have walked out saying, â€œIâ€™m still not convinced, but hereâ€™s a hundred bucks for trying.â€ The Sullivan Brothers of North Adams built the Colonial Theatre in 1903. They had built a theater in North Adams in 1901, Boland said. Every Tuesday night, a train ran from Pittsfield to North Adams to see the show. Tuesday became Pittsfield Night at the theater, and the train was always packed. The Sullivans decided Pittsfield had a market for drama. They drove in the stakes in April, 1903 and had the building inspector tour the finished theater that September. They dug the cellar by hand, too. A large tree stump is still left in the middle. Boland said the Pittsfield Sun reported that some of the neighbors tried to convince the contractor to move the building the few blocks to Wendell Avenue, out of their neighborhood. They offered him $13, but he wanted $30, and they could not raise the rest. He added that the contractor had to work three Sunday afternoons to finish on schedule, and several ministers preached sermons on the moral breakdown in America that this new theater represented. The Colonial opened with a production of Robin Hood by the Bostonians, a world-famous opera company. In the beginning, four or five different productions played there each week. Tours from New York, Boston, New Haven, Conn., Schenectady, N.Y., stopped over for the night. Max Feidler brought the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1913, and Uncle Tomâ€™s Cabin came in 1914. Sarah Bernhard played Hamlet here, and Portia in A Merchant of Venice, and La Dame Aux Camelies with her European theater troupe. The house held seating for 1,200. The Sullivans sold the Colonial to Pittsfield Theatre Company in 1911. The stock rated $1 a share. From 1912 to 1917, the Colonial Players, a company in repertory, staged a different production each night. In 1917, President William Howard Taft spoke as President of the League to Enforce Peace, which became the United Nations. The Colonial Players dissolved at the end of the First World War. Edith Luckett, the leading lady, ran away with a Pittsfield man, Kenneth Seymour Robbins. She had been married to the company bookkeeper. (She and Robbins had a daughter, Nancy Robbins Davis â€” now Nancy Reagan.) The Colonial continued to welcome tours and host local shows. The Marriage of Figaro played there, and Eubie Blakeâ€™s black musical Shuffle Along, and the Zeigfield Follies Tour took the stage with 100-member cast. In 1924, the Colonial Players reappeared. They played the theater until 1928. The Town Players of Pittsfield were born from them and still perform three times a year. They are one of the oldest community theater groups in the country. In 1934, under pressure from the stock market crash and film, the Colonial closed again. It reopened as a movie house from 1939 to 1949, according to Boland. In 1952, George Miller bought the building. He converted it to retail space, but made a point of preserving the original architecture. He kept original doors in the cellar, where the gentlemenâ€™s smoking room once was. He saved as much of the drapery fabric and decoration as he could. His son has done the same. All the shelving and hardware in the store is freestanding and would be easy to remove. Boland pointed out the area in Millerâ€™s Art Supply where the ladiesâ€™ parlor and ladiesâ€™ room would have been, and the lintels of the old doors at the end of what was the lobby. Boland said he had thought for many years that local architect Joseph MacArthur Vance designed the building. Vance designed Pittsfieldâ€™s Baptist Church, Wahconah Park, the Masonic Temple and Bascom Lodge, and he did design the exterior of the theater. But Boland has recently proved that the inside is an exact duplicate of North Adamsâ€™ Empire Theatre, and J. B. McElfatrick designed the Empire. McElfatrick earned great fame in the last century with his knowledge of acoustics. He designed theaters in a series of interlocking ellipses. Some are still famous across the country. Among others, he designed the original Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. His rounded surfaces magnify sound without a bounce or an echo, Boland said. The actor George M. Cohen said in his memoirs that the Colonial was his favorite stage to play, because he could sigh or whisper on it and be heard in the highest rows. McElfatrickâ€™s sounding board above the stage, painted with figures of Music and Art, is in poor shape but easy to repair. Like it, the molded facing of the mezzanine would have been painted in naturalistic colors: green and olive vines, red roses, blonde women. Boland knows because he climbed a ladder to scrape at its current white face. Workmen from Scotland and Ireland who specialized in painting and molding did all this work on site, he said. Besides the gilt plaster scrolls and cupids, the theater wore scarlet drapery on the first level and maroon on the second. The pillars of the proscenium arch in gold leaf, flank the stage. They abut a small orchestra pit, but the pit could be enlarged by digging under the stage, as the Met did: the original Metropolitan Opera House proscenium is a duplicate of this one. Boland said it has 15-foot wings, and 30-foot stage. There are many Broadway houses the same size, and all college courses use a standard 32-foot opening for set design. The house could accommodate any Broadway performance. It would not be large enough to afford blockbuster shows, though. Boland explained that seats and aisles were narrower in Victorian theaters than they are today, and sound equipment would take up some seating room. The new theater would seat 805. Boland said he has seen several civic studies come down that have all said: â€œWhat Pittsfield needs is a 900-seat auditorium.â€ To him, 805 is close enough. Upstairs, Boland showed the tour through the old champagne lobby where patrons would have gathered at intermission. It is divided now by an extra wall and support for the 1930â€™s movie projector. Old film projectors sounded like lawn mowers, he said, and film was not fireproof. They needed to be in protected space. The second floor is 10 feet above the stage. An original, rolled up scenic backdrop and the stageâ€™s pulley system are helping to hold up Millerâ€™s drop ceiling. The first couple of winters, his clerks wore hats, gloves and scarves behind the counter, because the whole of the theater was so difficult to heat. Miller took temporary measures to warm them. The theater also, naturally, had a slanted ground floor. Boland said it was the kind of theater where you can see over the hat of the lady in front of you â€” though any lady who refused to remove her hat would have had her money refunded and been escorted out. Miller filled the first floor with freestanding shelves to hold his art supplies. When he got tired of watching them slide down the floor, he hired six high school boys and 12 hydraulic jacks, loosened the floor, and straightened it. It can be jacked back down just as easily.

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Local Chef, North Adams Police Team Up to Deliver Thanksgiving Meals

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:21AM / Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Det. Stephanie Mirante and Chris Bonnivier go over their list of addresses.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Three dozen local families will be feasting this Thanksgiving thanks to a local chef with some help from the Police Department.

Chris Bonnivier said he and his wife, Linda, have been providing 20 to 25 residents in tough financial circumstance with the ingredients for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for a dozen years — doing the shopping, packing and delivery.

"We got to the point, we have grandchildren now," he said. "We want to help. We're doing this by the grace of God, I'm a true believer, that we've been blessed and we're doing this on our own with his help."

But the effort had become wearing ... until a few more hands volunteered to help.

On Tuesday, Police Chief Mark Bailey and others gathered at 23 Eagle St. to pack bags with turkey and all the fixings.

It started with a call to MaryAnn King, a dispatcher, about the annual public safety toy drive. Members of the Police and Fire Departments and Northern Berkshire EMS do a toy drive at Walmart then wrap and deliver hundreds of presents.

King's been leading that effort for years and last year provided to toys to nearly 200 children. She'd contacted Bonnivier about matching some funds for a pallet of toys; Bonnivier responded by donating the total cost of the pallet and asking for helping hands in return.

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