Georgia Theater's Exterior Restored
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Dec. 15, 2010
This month, Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is playing in many theaters across the country, including a small historic theater on Georgia's southeastern coast. In Brunswick, Ga., the mayor, Bryan Thompson, plays the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. But offstage, Thompson has little reason to be grumpy: The historic Ritz Theatre's exterior has been restored, thanks to a partnership between the city of Brunswick, its coordinating arts council, and an Atlanta-based nonprofit.
Located on the Intracoastal Waterway in historic downtown Brunswick, the Ritz Theatre opened in 1898 as an opera house. The three-story Victorian building later operated as a vaudeville theater, and in the 1930s was converted to an Art Deco movie house. The theater declined in the 1970s, and was threatened with demolition.
"The community went ballistic," Thompson remembers. "Everybody—blacks, whites, young, old—stood up and protested."
Pressured to save the Ritz, the city stepped in and bought the theater in 1980. Although the building was thoroughly renovated two decades ago, by this year its windows and exterior were in need of repair.
"The windows definitely were in poor shape," says Molly Fortune, director of restoration at the Fox Theatre Institute, launched in July 2008 by Atlanta Landmarks Inc., a nonprofit that owns and operates the 1920s Fox Theatre in Atlanta. "Some glass had slipped out, and one window shattered and fell to the street below."
During the project, local workers removed vegetation from the Ritz Theatre's red-brick exterior, repointed bricks, and repainted the theater's exterior. Each of the building's 58 windows was restored according to the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation—at a lower lifetime cost than replacement, according to the Fox Theatre Institute. "There's a very noticeable change [in the building's appearance," Fortune says. "It really is very dramatic."
The Ritz Theater remained open during the project, which began last January and officially ended last month. The city of Brunswick paid for half of the $60,000 project, and the Fox Theatre Institute contributed the remainder of the funds.
"[The Ritz] brings people into the downtown," Mayor Thompson says. "Everybody in town grew up in that theater. Most people held their first hand there, got their first kiss there. It has always been a part of people's lives."
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