Bardavon theater's shows go on

Venue almost victim of wrecking ball

By Shelly Curran
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

But agitated citizens, who perhaps had learned just how effective protest could be from the previous decade’s peace and civil rights movements, banded together and saved it.

This theater’s stage was where Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt rallied votes and where legendary performers, including Edwin Booth and the Barrymores, enthralled audiences. The Bardavon would remain a vital part of the cultural life of Dutchess County and the mid-Hudson Valley.

The Collingwood Opera House (the Bardavon’s original name) opened on Monday, Feb. 1, 1869, with the Citizens Complimentary Concert in honor of owner and operator James Collingwood.

The prominent businessman was a local coal lumber merchant and one of the most successful men in Poughkeepsie. The Collingwood Opera House was the first theater of its kind in the Hudson Valley.

The original design was by J.A. Wood, a local architect, but James S. Post, who supervised the construction of the building, was given credit as architect. The construction of the new music hall began in June 1868 and was completed in eight months at a cost of $50,000.

The ceiling included a dome that was proclaimed the finest feature of the building and soon became one of Wood’s trademarks. The theater was positioned behind an office building that Collingwood had built five years earlier and included an entrance that brought patrons through an arched passageway that had been used as a driveway for carriages and wagons carrying coal.

At this first stage in its history, the opera house seated 2,000 people: 900 in the orchestra, 600 in the first balcony and 500 on the benches in the ‘‘peanut’’ gallery. Backstage, the theater was equipped to present the most up-to-date shows. Later, a fly loft above the stage was built so scenery could be hung or ‘‘flown in’’ from above.

From the day of its opening, the Collingwood presented a variety of professional and community events. Town meetings, celebrations, political rallies and even graduations were held there.

Both presidents named Roosevelt appeared there for local, state and national rallies. The Poughkeepsie Lyceum held an annual series for lectures, including one given by Mark Twain. Between 1869 and 1921, the opera house boasted such legendary performers as Ethel, John and Maurice Barrymore, Sarah Bernhardt, Edwin Booth, ‘‘Buffalo Bill’’ Cody, George M. Cohan, Will Rogers, as well as violinist Jascha Heifetz and pianist Ignace Paderewski.

Stage one, the Collingwood Opera House, lasted for more than 50 years as one of the most prosperous and leading performance houses in the country.

In 1918, the opera house was sold to a group of Poughkeepsie’s leading businessmen, led by Ely Elting. The second stage of the theater’s evolution began when they decided that the names Collingwood and ‘‘opera house’’ had become obsolete. Architect William Beardsley designed the renovations for ‘‘a palace of amusement’’ to be the pride of Poughkeepsie. The theater reopened Jan. 1, 1923, as the Bardavon Theatre with 1,400 seats. The 60-foot span of the proscenium boasted a mural of Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, seated in a meditative pose on the bank of the Avon River, which gave the theater its new name, Bardavon.

For the first two years, the Bardavon featured films and live entertainment. In May 1925, the Bardavon was leased by Paramount Pictures and became almost exclusively a movie house. A Wurlitzer theater organ was installed to accompany silent films in 1928. Paramount’s northeast subsidiary, NETCO, purchased the Bardavon Theatre and the office building in front of it in 1943.

During most of its 50 years as a movie house, the Bardavon was Paramount’s ‘‘A’’ house in Poughkeepsie. Some of today’s most memorable film classics were seen in first run on the Bardavon screen, including ‘‘Gone With the Wind,’’ ‘‘Hamlet’’ starring Richard Burton, ‘‘The Sound of Music,’’ ‘‘Dial M for Murder,’’ ‘‘The Godfather’’ and ‘‘Goldfinger.’’

The introduction of movie theatres in suburban shopping centers triggered the decline of Poughkeepsie’s downtown movie houses. The Bardavon Theatre was the last to close as a movie house in September 1975. When the city’s Urban Renewal Plan slated the Bardavon for demolition, the theater seemed destined to end its second stage of life as a parking lot.

With equal drama, the next and present stage began when a group of Poughkeepsie residents joined together to form the Concerned Citizens to Save the Bardavon. A strong surge of public support enabled them to alter the course of the urban renewal and obtain a lease for the theater. Subsequently, the Bardavon 1869 Opera House was established as a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting a variety of professional and local art groups for the community. To help secure the Bardavon’s future, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 preventing any possible plan for demolition.

The Bardavon remains the oldest operating theater in New York state and continues the traditions set forth by James Collingwood, offering jazz, blues, classical music, drama, film, children’s and senior programming, dance and opera.

Millions of people have stepped through the Bardavon’s doors and into history, a history that has seen thousands of performers, decades of entertainment trends and endless changing stages.

Shelly Curran is a staff member of the Bardavon 1869 Opera House.