{"id":61,"date":"2017-03-17T07:55:32","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T07:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo-octalogo.com\/George-Kramer\/?p=61"},"modified":"2017-03-17T09:06:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T09:06:26","slug":"liberty-theatre-north-bend-or-phase-1-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/liberty-theatre-north-bend-or-phase-1-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty Theatre, North Bend, OR, Phase 1 and counting….."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liberty Theatre, in North Bend, was designed by Tourtellotte & Hummel, of Boise and Portland, and opened on Easter Sunday 1924.\u00a0 It cost $50,000, and was just one of the fine concrete, fireproof, structures built in that city during North Bend boom of the early 1920s.\u00a0 The Liberty showed movies through WWII but was closed when the newer, wide-screen, Port opened.\u00a0 It sat vacant for a time before its owners leased the building to Little Theater on the Bay (LTOB), a Coos County-based community theater group.\u00a0 LIBERTY<\/a>\u00a0 LTOB purchased the building in the 1970s, paid off the mortgage in 1996 and even bought the lot next door.<\/p>\n

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Coos County, so isolated for so many years before the coastal bridges and highway was completed, developed a rather amazing tradition of high quality local theater.\u00a0 In those early years there just wasn\u2019t much entertainment there and people, talented people, learned to entertain themselves.\u00a0 LTOB is now the second oldest continuously operated theater group in Oregon, and has put on productions for more than six decades.\u00a0 Their alumni include people who went on to Hollywood fame (Roy Scheider), people who perform at OSF, and yes, just as likely the local teacher, the guy that works at the mill, or youngsters from area schools.\u00a0 It\u2019s community at its best.\u00a0 The quality is rather astounding.<\/p>\n

Focusing on theater, LTOB lucked out with the Liberty Theatre but it was never exactly their primary focus.\u00a0 As long as the roof didn\u2019t leak, the power worked, and the acoustics were good (they are great) the theatre was just a building.\u00a0 There has been an on-off interest in new digs, maybe restoring the Liberty or maybe replacing it, but nothing much happened.\u00a0 Perhaps inspired by the work on the Egyptian Theatre, just down the road in Coos Bay, the LTOB Board asked us to come out and take a look.<\/p>\n

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\nI had driven by the Liberty for years and never really noticed it.\u00a0 The rather monochromatic, (I called it Taupe-on-Taupe) faded, paint scheme didn\u2019t exactly draw the eye and, located at a curve on Sherman Street at the south part of downtown North Bend, the natural inclination is to look away, toward the road.\u00a0 Certainly I’d not been inside and, frankly, when the chance finally arrived this Spring, I didn\u2019t expect to find much.\u00a0 I was wrong.<\/p>\n

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The interior has much of its original design\u2026the lighting and even the seats are all still there, probably not much different from what they were in 1924.\u00a0 There has been some change and loss (the painted murals are hidden) and there\u2019s stage lighting and sound from the conversion to live theater, but there’s lots to work with.<\/p>\n

The building is in good shape, mostly with deferred maintenance outdated systems, but nothing major.\u00a0 LTOB continues to put on plays and the magic on stage buys a lot of forgiveness for the limited services, lack of indoor ADA restrooms and small lobby and concession stand, but certainly the Liberty, a phenomenal Moorish design, could be so much more than it is.\u00a0 I couldn’t see any reason not to rehab it and make it what it should be.<\/p>\n

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\nLTOB decided to launch a fund-raising effort.\u00a0 The City of North Bend\u2019s Urban Renewal Agency very generously stepped up to the table with a major (like 6-figures major) matching gift and over the next few years, in a series of phases, the Liberty Theatre will get the attention that its needs.\u00a0 We\u2019ll bring the \u201cshow to the sidewalk,\u201d and give LTOB the venue that their tradition of quality productions deserve.<\/p>\n

Phase 1 was painting the exterior and having people notice the building and boy, do they ever!\u00a0 We did some testing to determine the color history of the exterior and came up with a historically-based design to support the Moorish style T&H chose in 1924.\u00a0 Next up, new restrooms and some lobby areas on the lot to the south, getting rid of the oh-so-lovely Sani-Can and then later a new marquee, some storage and rehearsal spaces, new systems, and more.\u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Liberty Theatre, in North Bend, was designed by Tourtellotte & Hummel, of Boise and Portland, and opened on Easter Sunday 1924.\u00a0 It cost $50,000, and [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserveoregon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}