Town hears echoes of its past in opera hall

By Mark Bennett
THE TRIBUNE STAR (TERRE HAUTE, Ind.)

MARSHALL, Ill. April 16, 2008 02:36 pm

— Damian Macey guided a visitor up the stairs leading to the upper floor of Harlan Hall.

Looking over his shoulder as he climbed, Macey asked, “Do you hear that?”

The only sounds came from shoe soles, shuffling over the thick wood. “There’s not a creak in that stairway, at all,” Macey said, smiling.

The name of the architect who designed Harlan Hall nearly 137 years ago is a mystery. “It’s probably on a shelf somewhere,” Macey guessed. Despite the anonymity, that 19th-century craftsman gets a lot of praise these days.

An ongoing community renovation project has uncovered the Italianate-style building’s original look.

Harlan Hall has lived several lives since its construction began in 1871 and it was unveiled with a Valentine’s Day ball on Feb. 14, 1872, but it began as an opera hall and theater.

Its founder, Marshall businessman Howard Harlan, owned a livery stable on the southeast corner of the courthouse square. He decided to erect a massive hall above the stable, large enough to hold hundreds of people for traveling stage performances, musicals or town meetings, according to a Sept. 1, 1871, story in the Clark County Herald.

That opening night ball in 1872 drew 250 guests from Springfield, Effingham and nearby Illinois towns, as well as Terre Haute.

“It was a lavish affair,” said Macey, a 69-year-old retired Marshall stockbroker.

Macey and a corps of fellow volunteers want a similarly grand event when Harlan Hall’s restoration is complete. Marshall Mayor Ken Smith hopes the project will wrap up this fall. The volunteers already have put in 12,000 documented hours, in addition to extra unclaimed hours. Most of that work involved modernizing the structure and peeling away a hodgepodge of walls and coverings added as it transformed from an opera hall to a retail store, a paint shop, a manufacturing plant for a laxative, an International Harvester dealership and finally the Moose Lodge.

The lodge folded in 2000, and the city bought the building from the group for $45,000 in April 2001.

At one point, Harlan Hall appeared destined to become a parking lot. Prospective buyers planned to raze it. Ironically, after the city purchased the building and plans for its restoration were announced, some of those who considered tearing down Harlan Hall contributed heavily to its recovery project. That included a $100,000 donation that project manager Pat McCammon called “gracious,” and another $50,000 willed by a woman toward the effort.

“We’ve been blessed,” McCammon said.

Busy schedule ahead

The City of Marshall made a commitment to fund Harlan Hall’s restoration primarily through state and federal grants, and donations. By the time the work is complete, those contributions likely will total $1 million, Smith said.

He insisted the finished product will be worth the cost. Community events, dances, meetings, arts and music performances, and bingo games once again will fill its 4,900-square-foot first floor, and the cavernous 9,900-square-foot hall above. Organizations already have booked Harlan Hall for activities this year and in 2009. In fact, Marshall High School will conduct its Junior-Senior Prom in Harlan Hall for the first time in decades, on April 26. Four nights later, older Marshall residents will have their own nostalgic “Senior” Prom, using the same Victorian-themed decorations as the high school’s dance.

Many of those retro prom-goers can recall attending events in Harlan Hall. Smith, 63, went to the Marshall High School football banquets in the 1960s. Macey visited an after-prom party there in 1955.

During Harlan Hall’s early years, though, its diverse agenda included theatrical plays, such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” roller-skating competitions and boxing matches.

Through every evolution, the building survived. Its simple, solid construction helped Harlan Hall endure through parts of three centuries.

The first floor, once home to the livery, still has the original sliding wooden doors to the stables, as well as the narrow windows that allowed horses to poke their heads outside for fresh air. Even the trench in the concrete floor, used to drain horse urine, has been preserved (and cleaned). Through donations, the first level features remodeled offices, a dining hall and a kitchen serviced by a local catering firm. The original tin ceiling was restored in one room but had deteriorated in others, so a matching replacement tin ceiling was purchased from an Ohio company. Craftsmen from around the Wabash Valley built doors, trim, stairs and cabinets. Pianos, organs, tables and chairs were donated.

“We try to do things with some quality,” Smith said. “It’s going to be here for a long time. We hope it’ll be here when we’re gone, so we’ve got to take care of it.”

Reliving history

With the ground floor nearing completion, an elaborate second-floor project should begin this spring. The opera hall will become an interpretive center for the National Road, U.S. 40, which bisects Marshall and was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson in 1806. It will feature mannequins in period clothing, new lighting and sound systems, and interactive displays on the National Road’s history.

That high-tech learning equipment will be positioned around the hall, which is 40 feet wide and 100 feet long, with 18-foot ceilings. A mezzanine balcony overlooks the main floor from three sides around the main stage. The truss timbers, nearly as thick as trees, support the roof without any internal pillars, giving an audience an unobstructed view of a performance. Along the staircase and balcony, the original newel posts and balustrades look amazingly sturdy and unworn.

During its Moose Lodge era, the second-floor windows were covered with insulation. When restoration volunteers removed the insulation, they found a few bird skeletons, but also discovered the window sashes and sills were intact. Two windows even have the original panes of glass.

Only a few structural changes were required to meet state and federal guidelines, including the addition of an elevator and the replacement of outdated wiring. Unlike the rest of Harlan Hall, those antiquated wiring cables were dangerously obsolete, Smith said. Somehow, the building avoided serious fires.

“I guess the good Lord looked after it,” Smith said.

The $500,000 project to create the second-floor National Road interpretive center will be funded primarily by a federal grant, though $100,000 of that total must come from the local contributions collected, Smith said. Bidding for the work will begin this month, and the contract calls for completion within six months.

“We’re anxious that by early fall, we’re done,” the mayor said.

As Smith mentioned that target, some of the volunteers — Bob Rhodes, a 69-year-old retiree from Sony DADC in Terre Haute; Ben Hammond, a 79-year-old retired radio and TV repairman; Charles Gamm, 70, who retired from Kroger in Terre Haute; McCammon, 70; and Macey — reminisced about the long road the effort has taken already.

McCammon remembers when Hammond wandered into Harlan Hall out of curiosity. He’d seen the project mentioned in the local newspaper. “He said, ‘Could you use some help?’” McCammon recalled, “and it was like a prayer answered.”

As Hammond puts it, with a laugh, “I love these old buildings, and I’m crazy.”

Macey favors vintage structures, too. His home was built in 1864. “So I have an appreciation for old buildings,” he said.

That was obvious as he and the others spoke almost reverently about why they’d toiled so hard to preserve Harlan Hall, where weddings, receptions, birthdays, parties and musicals soon will return. “It’s preserving a big part of our local history,” Macey said.

Standing on the balcony with afternoon light flowing into the loft, Macey, Gamm and Smith looked at clippings of play and opera bills from the 1870s.

“If these walls could talk,” Macey said.



Mark Bennett writes for The Tribune Star in Terre Haute, Ind. He can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.



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About Harlan Hall


Location: Southeast corner of courthouse square in Marshall, Ill.

Built: 1871

Opened: Feb. 14, 1872

Founder: Howard Harlan, Marshall livery stable owner

Restoration project: Remodeled first floor features offices for local groups, a kitchen and dining room, and bingo equipment. The second floor, with its 40-foot-wide, 100-foot-long and 18-foot-high hall, will feature an interpretive center for the National Road, while also maintaining flexibility to house large special events.

For more information: Contact Pat McCammon, project manager, at (217) 826-2498.

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