A brief history of the Colonial Theatre

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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 Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre, with Robert Boland of the Colonial Theatre Association. Boland spoke of the theater’s 99-year history. He brought out pictures of the original Colonial Players and programs from the theater’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 D’arc, and many others. “Just having all this is such a gift,” 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 “running out of superlatives to describe the theater” 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. Banknorth’s support of the Colonial Theatre proved just how vital a role banks could play in the city’s health. And Hathaway thanked Steven Miller and his father George, who have preserved the Colonial Theatre building since 1942. “This theater has been sustained by the Miller family for these 50 years,” she said, “and perhaps it is now ready for statehood.” 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. “If you want people to still be coming in 50 years, it has to be done right,” he said. He convinced former first lady Hilary Clinton, on a similar tour, that the theater was worth $400,000 from the Save America’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 Pittsfield’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, “I’m still not convinced, but here’s a hundred bucks for trying.” 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 Tom’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 — now Nancy Reagan.) The Colonial continued to welcome tours and host local shows. The Marriage of Figaro played there, and Eubie Blake’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 gentlemen’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 Miller’s Art Supply where the ladies’ parlor and ladies’ 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 Pittsfield’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 Adams’ 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. McElfatrick’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: “What Pittsfield needs is a 900-seat auditorium.” 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 1930’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 stage’s pulley system are helping to hold up Miller’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 — 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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North Adams Disability Commission Gets Funding, Grant Abilities

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The City Council on Tuesday accepted two sections of state law that will allow the Commission on Disabilities to apply for grants and use handicapped-parking fees. 
 
The adoptions were brought forward by City Councilor Ashley Shade in cooperation with Mayor Jennifer Macksey and the commission. 
 
"The section 8J will allow the Disabilities Commission and the city to be eligible for grants and funding through the state to improve disability access and for projects that would affect people with disabilities in our community," said Shade. "The adoption of 20G would reserve funding from handicap parking fines to be directed to specifically be spent under the jurisdiction of the commission for people with disabilities. ...
 
"This is Disabilities Pride Month so it's very fitting that we take these measures this month and work to continue improving access."
 
The measures are MGL Title VII, Chapter 40, Sections 22G and 8J. 
 
"We're very excited to support this," said the mayor. "We were quite surprised when we started digging in about what was accepted and what hasn't been formally accepted. I really just wanted to applaud the work of the Disability Commission, many of the members who are here tonight. They're an active group and are really working on the betterment of individuals with disabilities in our community."
 
Macksey said the adoption will allow for fines incurred for handicapped parking spaces to be set aside in a reserve account for use by the commission. The amounts are small — ranging from $900 to $1,500 annually the past three years — so should not have a huge impact on local receipts, she said. 
 
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