At the Tristan Hoare Gallery in London, you’ll find a fascinating exhibition about US movie theatres, featuring forgotten palaces of entertainment whose time ran out.
Undoubtedly melancholy in spirit, the exhibition is a needed wake-up call that these once- popular treasures can be saved if a will and a way (and several million dollars in cash) can be found.
The book which the exhibition is based upon, Movie Theaters, is a recently-published work by two French photographers, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, the result of a 15-year collaboration which captures the former “cathedrals of cinema” of America. Shooting with a large format 4×5 camera using long exposures in dimly-lit auditoriums, the images are conceived as historical documents of what was once the Golden Era of the American movie-going experience.
From the venue’s website: “Many of the theatres captured by Marchand and Meffre date from the Golden Age of American film (1910s to 30s) when the big film studios competed to build extravagant venues to entice and thrill their audiences. A night at the movies was a glamorous occasion where the buildings themselves became as much of a draw as the movie being screened. Following the stock market crash in 1929 and in the post-war era thereafter, multiplexes and shopping malls made these theatres redundant, inevitably causing them to fall into disrepair. Many were converted into a multitude of purposes ranging from churches, retail space, flea markets, bingo halls, discos, supermarkets, gymnasiums, or warehouses, and often with comical results! While some remain relatively unchanged, others clash with their newfound purpose, creating unexpected spaces which act as a fascinating documents of American History.
The exhibition presents the never-before exhibited Proctor’s Theater, Troy, NY (2012), taking the central place in the gallery’s first room. The works exhibited present examples of abandoned theatres with their curtains torn and seats shrouded in decades of dust, reused cinemas in disrepair, acting as bus depots or car workshops, and finally those that have been reused and refurbished, often hiding the grand vaulted ceilings and ornamental mouldings that once attracted visitors. The exhibition will also present a series of typologies of the exteriors of the grand movie palaces Marchand and Meffre ventured into.
Marchand and Meffre’s images represent some of the survivors of a century of industrial, aesthetic and social change, their continued existence prompting a sense of nostalgia for the golden age of American cinema which carried American values, ideas and entertainment across the world.”
The free exhibition runs until March 11th and the gallery is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 6pm. Tristan Hoare, 6 Fitzroy Square, London W1T 5DX (close to Warren Street and Great Portland Street Underground stations)
For those intrigued, the huge book from which the exhibition is curated has 300 pages with 220 colour illustrations, and is currently available on Amazon at a substantially discounted price here
The much-neglected Hulme Hippodrome has had good news in recent days. Its recent listing as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) may just be the turning point in its beleaguered history.
The 1900-seat theatre was built in 1901, and in 1902 another theatre, the Pavilion was built right alongside, with the adjoining arcade housing the head offices of the important Broadhead circuit of theatres, who built and owned both theatres. The Hippodrome also contains another large space, the Floral Hall, as big again as the theatre. So I am sure that you can imagine this is a major combination of buildings, significant for many reasons – both architectural and historical.
Hulme Hippodrome was last used for theatre in the 1960s and then bingo from the mid-1970s until its closure in 1986, from which time it has deteriorated due to non-use and lack of regular maintenance. Hulme Hippodrome has been on the Theatres at Risk Register each year since 2006, when they started the list.
Those wanting to know the full backstory can read it at the ever-dependable Theatres Trust website here.
A religious organisation bought the Hippodrome and operated out of the foyer until the Council slapped a Dangerous Buildings notice on them, during which time the building has been slowly decaying with no upkeep apparent. After invasion by squatters caused further damage, the building was later cleared and secured.
Recently the building was subject to a number of quick attempted sales at inflated prices. However, these sales were stopped and are being investigated as having not disclosed the building being Grade II listed and misleadingly offering it for redevelopment.
The Save the Hulme Hippodrome campaign group was started at the start of 2021 in response to these attempted sales. It has raised a significant amount by Crowdfunding from supporters (including myself), and campaigned for the Hippodrome to become an Asset of Community Value (ACV), which was agreed in mid-August.
Working in partnership with the Theatres Trust, the group has created an sensible and ambitious vision, a detailed and costed Action Plan for the restoration of the building including phased community uses from the earliest safe point possible and is well-placed to further explore that, given appropriate support.
The religious group which owned the buildings before these recent attempted sales may well find the Hippodrome back in its ownership. However, in 2017 the leader of the group was indicted to Africa on charges of child trafficking.
The group is now lobbying the Charities Commission and asks for your help too.
The Group says: “We expect that senior managers at the Charity Commission will be meeting in the next few days to decide whether the building remains with the disgraced charity and is allowed to continue to rot, or whether the Charity Commission will intervene and use their legal powers to hand over the building to an organisation which will secure it and bring it back into community use.
We hope that you will be able to assist us in rescuing the building from dereliction and ensure its future as a community asset. We are encouraging all our supporters to make their feelings known today to the Charity Commission, and a template letter is available in the link below to send. Please share this far and wide.”
You can find the template letter here or find it reproduced in full for you to cut and paste below
I’ve sent my email.
Will you please send yours?
Thank You for your help in trying to bring Hulme Hippodrome back from the brink.
Hulme Hippodrome and Gilbert Deya Ministries (Charity ref# 1051722)
I am writing to request that the Commission acts promptly to intervene on or before the 30 September 2021 to facilitate the return of the Hulme Hippodrome building to the community before it becomes derelict beyond repair. It will not withstand the damages of another winter.
You will be aware that HM Land Registry (HMLR) have now issued a “warning of cancellation” and have written to the solicitors of parties in the chain, saying the pending sales will collapse on 30 September 2021 because of non-compliance with Rule 16 of the Land Registry Rules 2003 unless there is full compliance beforehand. If this happens, the default is that the building would revert to the disgraced GDM charity.
I am asking you to use your powers given by Parliament to secure Hulme Hippodrome and place it fairly with a responsible organisation which will protect the building and ensure it becomes an active community asset once again.
Save Hulme Hippodrome Ltd (SHH) is a non-profit company and has been leading the campaign to save the Hulme Hippodrome, a Grade 2 listed building and has the support of the Manchester City Council. SHH has a detailed and costed Action Plan for the restoration of the building including phased community uses from the earliest safe point possible. SHH has followed legal advice and attempted to negotiate a fair use of the building in utmost good faith with the current owner/s, but nothing at all was forthcoming.
SHH has been actively seeking to rescue the Hippodrome since January 2021 when they uncovered a complicated chain of sales of the building leading to a failed attempt to auction the Grade 2 historic theatre for development. Through their actions the building is now legally registered as an Asset of Community Value. SHH has obtained a RICS-compliant independent valuation and this has been shared with Charity Commission officers and the Interim Managers. I hope that you will be able to assist here in rescuing the building from dereliction and ensure its future as a community asset.
Yours sincerely
UPDATE 30 September
I have just received this from the Charities Commission
Dear Mr Donaldson,
Thank you for your recent email to our Chief Executive, Helen Stephenson, in relation to Floral Hall/The Hulme Hippodrome. As the Head of Investigations, your concerns were passed to me and I am responding on the CEO’s behalf.
In your email, you raised concerns about the sale of the Hulme Hippodrome building and, in particular, the upcoming deadline that HM Land Registry (HMLR) have given the buyer to provide further information.
The Charity Commission has considered the validity of the sale and concluded that it was a valid sale (disposal of land), in accordance with the Charities Act 2011. Despite the failure by the charity to comply with some of the statutory requirements, the sale was valid. The sale was also considered by appointed Interim Managers of the charity, and they reached the same conclusion. Therefore, the current buyer/owners will remain responsible for it, and the Commission no longer have a regulatory role in the matter. This would be subject to change should new evidence be received about the validity of the sale. We would, in that instance, take appropriate action, as necessary.
In consideration of the HMLR’s letter to K & K Solicitors, we note the ongoing objection. Our understanding of the “Warning of cancellation” is that the HMLR will cancel the application to register title unless they receive a full reply to their requisitions. The letter also set out what will happen if an application is cancelled. It has been noted that it did not include the sale being considered invalid or being set aside.
We have, therefore, advised the Secretary of Save the Hulme Hippodrome to contact the HMLR about this matter.
Thank you again for writing to us to express your concerns.
Yours sincerely,
Amy Spiller Head of Investigations Charities Commission
It is deeply ironic that in this International Archive Week, when we are celebrating archives around the world, the UK is trying to come to terms with the fact that the V&A are effectively sabotaging the Theatre and Performance archives they hold in trust for the nation.
I reproduce below a statement from the President of SIBMAS without apology, for it says far more eloquently than I could what the issues are, and illustrates how this has been mishandled from start to finish.
The Statement from the President of SIBMAS reads as follows:
The V&A museum announced the end of its internal consultation process on 17 May 2021. Since then, several people may have received an upbeat email from Director Tristram Hunt about the cuts, including myself. Possibly the most telling sentence in the email relates to his description of the nature of the collection: “The V&A’s long-standing structure based on material specialisms will be protected, with dedicated Theatre & Performance curators with unique expertise and knowledge of the collections.”
This sentence highlights the complete lack of understanding of the nature of the performing arts collection and how it works. The V&A’s Department of Theatre & Performance is categorically NOT based on a material specialism, but by subject.
To date it has been looked after by a dedicated team of curators, archivists, and librarians. Their individual specialisms and professional knowledge, coupled with subject knowledge, made it one of the most effectively managed and accessible performing arts collections, anywhere.
Much is made in his email and V&A press releases of the process of consultation. Strangely, the V&A in their press release “thanked external parties who shared thoughtful and constructive points of feedback during consultation”. Despite 20,000 people signing the SIBMAS petition and many people sending letters, SIBMAS was not invited to have a single conversation or meeting with the V&A. It is our understanding, that APAC, STR and TAPRA were also not invited, nor have representatives of the theatre and performance industry. Stakeholders like us and the wider performing arts industry should have been involved in the consultation process, in order to help the museum to find the savings it needed to make, whilst preserving the integrity of the collection, maximum staff knowledge and continue to be an international leader for performing arts heritage.
I would like to remind everyone, that from the very beginning of this entire process, there was to be no Theatre & Performance Department. It was to be absorbed into the work of new departments by period and geography. After the SIBMAS petition, concern from many other sectors and extensive media coverage the V&A was forced to consider a compromise returning to the largely material specialism applied within the museum. The final plans of merging Theatre & Performance with Furniture, Fashion, Textiles at least keeps some idea of the separate needs of the performing arts alive, however it will come with a fundamental split of the collection materials and loss of expertise.
The Theatre & Performance Archive and Library Collections, including Gabrielle Enthoven’s founding collection of playbills donated in 1924, will be transferred to the expanded Research Department, which will be home to centralised V&A Archive and Library units. These transferred collections are the heart of performing arts history and a key resource for researchers, theatre practitioners, family, and theatre historians.
In summary, we fear that the dedicated service to documenting the UK’s performing arts comprising of all forms of heritage: archives, library, objects, audio visual materials together with an expert group of specialists working closely together has now been abandoned. A divisive approach of separating curators, archivists and librarians is being applied, losing the close working relationship within a team. In fact, it was always seen as the strength of the V&A’s performing arts collections to have such a cross-fertilisation of expertise amongst its team, which in turn elevated the strength of its collections and knowledge. The decision to proceed with the separation of a dedicated team and the care for the collections across several departments risks it becoming a collection with no vision or strategy. For people like us on the outside, it is simply confusing. If a researcher wants to access a theatre company archive, where do they go? Who do they contact? If someone wants to donate their personal archive covering their theatrical career, where do they go? What if the archive has objects, such as a costume or award in it? How will it work? If there had been a direct consultation with us, we could have asked these questions.Reference is made to losing only 2-3 curatorial staff and changes to the management structure, whilst T&P archive staff are apparently mapped over. This I think, does not include job losses in the wider former department. At this stage, and after months of no true consultation, our confidence in the museum’s management is somewhat shattered. We request to see evidence how expertise has been retained in the new structure and how the V&A plans to take serious responsibility for the UK’s National Collection for the Performing Arts in an internationally recognise way.
UNESCO define performing arts heritage as being a very distinct discipline. This is for a reason: performance is intangible, and as such it requires a complex mix of materials to collect, capture, preserve and promote it, ideally with a cohesive and dedicated approach. SIBMAS along with other organisations and individuals will be looking out for how things progress.
But also: Please we ask V&A Museum to start a proper conversation with stakeholders like us.
Alan R Jones President SIBMAS
And so, in the next few weeks, when contracts are terminated and lifetimes of expertise are lost forever, how will history look back on the V&A? What it has done will disrupt every future author or student of theatrical history across the globe who attempts to identify, locate and view archive material which will play a significant part in determining the quality of their analysis. For when they try to access the V&A archive in future, there will be fewer staff with less time and less experience, a broken up and re-filed collection which may or may not still be accessible. All of these arbitrary changes will in turn affect the quality of research and therefore the quality of examination future students and writers will make of our unparalleled theatrical and performance heritage.
Matt Lambros is an American movie location scout
and photographer of abandoned entertainment buildings. On Saturday February 22nd the Cinema Theatre Association hosted Matt in London to talk about his new book
“After The Final Curtain – America’s Abandoned Theaters”, featuring his
photographs of scores of abandoned theatres across America. In a talk
illustrated with generous amounts of his original photography, Matt took us
with him on his travels across America to find forgotten delights.
Matt does what we would all love to do- if we had
the time and energy. He travels the country photographing these abandoned gems
in whatever state he finds them. His stories about gaining access are often
tortuous, but Matt’s perseverance is boundless – and he comes up with the
goods.
Getting in is one challenge; what he finds inside
is quite another. He describes swarms of rats (he has regular tetanus shots),
crumbling masonry, asbestos, water and even sheet ice, all in an often pitch-black
environment (no electricity!). Matt relies on his LED camera light packs to
give him the illumination he needs, both for navigation and for photography.
And the results of this limited lighting, as seen in his many photographs, are
pretty breathtaking.
Covering America from coast to coast, the
theatres that Matt presented in his talk were mostly built between 1915 and
1925, the majority as vaudeville houses. Pretty soon, cinema took the place of
vaudeville, and many of the theatres became movie houses before changing hands in
the 70s and 80s through a succession of short-term owners whose interest in the
buildings declined with their lack of viability as money-makers. Mostly left to
rot, these decaying beauties simply sat and succumbed to the ravages of neglect.
Many now plainly past saving, Matt’s photos are a vital (in some cases perhaps
the only) record of these once important public amenities.
Along the journey, Matt shared with us some
oddities, such as the State Theatre in South Bend, Indiana which eschewed the traditional
balcony for small stepped boxes along the upper side walls of the auditorium
with a shallow gallery high up at the back- making both an odd-looking
auditorium and losing several hundred potential prime balcony seats in the
process!
Apparently the Americans have not yet compiled a
register of theatres at risk, (which the Theatres Trust do within the UK), so
it appears that, worryingly, no-one is keeping a watchful eye over these fading
gems.
Matt told us that he also tried to photograph
each theatre’s usually ornately decorated fire curtain; he often attempted to
lower these heavy steel curtains. However, with these decaying, unmaintained
buildings he had to bear in mind that they might not go back up.
If all this dereliction sounds rather bleak, Matt
recognised this and provided us with a most welcome “happy ending”, highlighting
several theatres which have been rescued, restored and returned to live use, saving
until last the Fischer Theatre in Darwin, Illinois which took less than a year
to renovate from start to finish, which Matt reckons may well be a record.
Many thanks to Matt for his five-star
presentation, and here’s to more happy endings for these American forgotten
beauties.
Many of Matt’s photos can be found at his Instagram address here
You can buy Matt’s book “After The Final Curtain: America’s Abandoned Theaters” here
You can find out more about the Cinema Theatre Association here
