Harmony Club: Music In The Loo

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Music In The Loo

It happened this evening. Opening night. After two(?) years of construction and I don't know how many years of conniving the new venue is alive. Today's paper was filled with it. Why not? The idea of a music hall is a wonderful thing. I love it. The music, that is. Even on the island. But not like what happened. The layers of half truths that resulted in our new music center are deplorable. There were too many to even list here, but a few to mention would be...we plan to renovate the existing mid-1800 building...the new (yes, no renovation, demolition instead) structure was built on the original footprint...the new building's facade will be a faithful reproduction of the original building...parking for our 330 seat hall will not be a problem, arrangements have been made (oh, and since we will be opening soon, we would like to eliminate 2 metered parking spaces so that we may have a drop-off zone). There are many other things that really irritate me about our new monstrosity built in our historic district. I can't possibly cover all that in this post.

I've decided to keep this post extremely proper noun eliminated. I want to bypass any search engines hitting upon my post when people are looking for info on The Loo and it's music programs. The nickname, The Loo, comes from a shortened version of the official name of the place. If you are in desperate need of knowing the name (or curious about the nickname's origin), click on the color photo of the front of the building (below) and read the full name over the door.

I offer some before and after photos for a 'how many changes can you find?' game.

The original building of 1863

The new building

The back of the building in 2008 as seen from Front Beach (white building with mansard style roof and a one story addition reaching out towards the granite seawall.

The back of the new building with three stories replacing the one story addition and massive two story windows backing the interior stage area.

I'm not happy about it. There were many other people not happy about it. There were lawsuits over it. Seems that once again money speaks louder. Even in a small, used-to-be-quaint-but -now-wants-to-be-uptown, seaside village.

2 comments:

scribbs said...: Yes, but the new hall is, well, new, which is really, really important to the fools that inhabit too many governmental agencies these days.

Old = Bad, new = Good, even if the original structure has more class, is easily restored and (as so often happens) has better acoustics and more charm.

I've seen this happen too often, and it always makes my blood boil.; 10:39 PM
deb said...: So much for our town historical commission.

A few decades ago, my parents bought a teeny house - in the historic district. Before the days of preservation minded people, some 'new', plain windows had been installed in one room, replacing the small paned originals. When my parents restored the house they had to go before the historic commission to get approval to replace those windows. They wanted to revert the styling back to the original (and to match the rest of the house). They had a terrible time trying to get approval because they were going to 'change' something. Even though it was in the back of the house and even though it was going back to the original style!

Now this. And listening to all the hype. Yuck. Well, more than yuck.

Can't say more at the moment. (a good thing, probably) I've got to get myself going this morning. I'm off to help paint the universe!; 7:45 AM