Joseph H. Lebowsky Center

The original operator of the Capitol Theatre in Owosso MI was W.S. Butterfield Theatres which ran it until it closed in 1985.

Here is a recent 2006 photo of the Joseph H. Lebowsky Center.

Historical theater burns down.... Joseph Lebowsky Theater in Owosso catches fire Tuesday night
ABC12 News
OWOSSO (WJRT) - (02/14/07)--The historic Joseph Lebowsky Theater in Owosso burned Tuesday night, as firefighters fought snow and cold in hopes of containing the fire.

One witness said smoke was billowing from the inside of the building. The theater has undergone several transformations over the years.

Most recently, the Owosso Community Players teamed up with Home Depot to renovate the building.

Those involved with the theater and the people who performed there are having trouble comprehending the loss.

"It's very numbing to me. I can't feel anything right now," said former theater board member Paul Kuhlman.

"It's a sad day, a very sad day. It was a place in the community for people to gather. It gave people a chance to meet people they would never meet - where a doctor could work next to someone who worked at Wal Mart in a play and everyone was equally important," said Mardie Hornus, another former theater board member.

"It's just a special thing for a community to have a gem like this, not to mention it was a 1926 theater. It was a beautiful building."

End news report.

I was never in the building but had seen it from the outside. I'm sure it will be greatly missed by the community in the future.

A day and moment of sadness on this Valentine's Day. It's always a shame to read about a 1926 landmark such as this now gone though I know the firefighters did their best under the worst of winter conditions. I don't recall reading a cause so perhaps it will be determined in the near future.

This newspaper story gives a photo of firefighters fighting the fire at 1 a.m.

http://www.argus-press.com/articles/2007/02/14/news/news1.txt

Just heartbreaking. My thoughts are with all of those dedicated volunteers.

This is terrible news,a big loss.

The fire department could have done ALOT more to save this. It was as if they were not giving a serious effort into saving the building, but instead only concentrating on the building next door.

I was there that night with a buddy who is a fire cheif for another town watching the fire. He totally agrees. When we got there, the fire appeared to be somewhat minor, yet instead of putting water on it, the Owosso FD concentrated only on the roof, and the building next door. No wonder they keep letting these histroical buildings burn to the ground. After the bowling alley incident which they handled horribly, it just makes the department look worse.

There were only two hoses on the fire most of the night, like I said concentrating only on the roof, and the bank next door. they never allowed firefighters into the building,supposedly due to the roof trusses that are known to weeken in intense heat, yet the stage house, and front of the building under the projection booth would have been safe, at least in the early stages. Instead nothing AT ALL was done to save the building, instead, they had two hoses, and 150firefighters (most of whome were just standing around watching), spraying the roof. that was it, nothing else.

I gotta say that I am downright upset they let the building burn down without putting the least bit effort into saving this wonderful theater. Whats next? the woodard building? They obviously dont care about saving historic structures. If you look at the FD's track record in the past five years, it is absolutely horrible. in each fire in a historic building, it has burned to the ground without much effort given to saving the buildings, rather, just in keeping it from spreading to nearby buildings. Maybe this is their plan at revitalizing the downtown area; let everything burn and put up nice new ugly buildigngs with no character.

A very sad commentary on an historical building.

With fire in theaters being such an established stereotype at this late point in time, one would think that the most fire-proof type buildings around today would be movie theaters. For how difficult can it be to grasp the simple concept that if this or that type material can readily burn DON'T HAVE IT IN MOVIE THEATERS!!!?

In any event, what happened with this particular theater can be seen as a wonderful opportunity to make it a much better theater, at least in being made more fireproof. For look at those brick walls shown in Michael Zoldessy's Feb. 18, 2007 post http://cinematreasures.org/news/16009_0_1_0_C20/, they seemed to hold up well. There was once some sculptor, I forget who it was, who said a sculpture really isn't complete till after you roll it down a hillside. Why not apply that same approach here? That is, the fire showed what was good and solid about the theater, and now it just has to be rebuilt, only this time around along those same guidelines. Why is that so hard for some to grasp?

The Owosso Community Players have published a special post-fire edition of their Marquee newsletter which you can read at http://www.owossoplayers.com/newsletters/2007/March2007.pdf

Thanks for the informative newsletter. My thoughts are with the Owosso Community Players and their gallant efforts to bring back this theatre after a devastating fire.

My thoughts likewise. And if the investigation shows that the fire was triggered simply by faulty electrical wiring, too many combustible materials inside and things of that nature, or that these were contributing factors, I can only hope the theater gets rebuilt with such factors omitted. For even post-fire it looks like a really great theater building worthy of saving and being a theater once more, grander than before.

Yes, grander than before!

There is a poignant video tour of the fire damaged Lebowsky Center at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gju6f8e_D1M which shows that much of the theater escaped serious damage which shows hope that the theater can be rebuilt. The Owosso Independent newspaper dated March 11 also has a tour with an article which a PDF is at http://www.owossoindependent.com/Resources/Indy%203-11-07.pdf The fire safety features typical of 1920s vintage vaudeville theaters worked perfectly during the fire. The smoke louvers on top of the stage house (nearly a full story higher than the theater's roof) opened up as did a steel curtain which dropped over the proscenium arch closing the stage from the auditorium until the fire spread to the theater's roof. The firewalls kept the fire from spreading to the two story front section so the lobby only suffered water damage as did the upstairs corridor. The upstairs office showed no obvious damage, but the wall clock is frozen at 11:08, the late night time when electricity was cut.

Assuming that's the first time those vintage fire safety features ever had to be brought into play, and the fact that they worked perfectly after all these many years of having been totally inert, that is a truly amazing story! Just in itself that speaks volumes about the quality of this theater!

But what's equally impressive is the quality attention this theater is being given by all the people now so heavily focused on its recovery! For I've seen theaters that had very good if not excellent chances of being brought from ruination in a big way, in some cases their not even in states of ruination really, but...

Well, for lack of a better way of putting it, they just happened to be in the wrong place people-wise. Or at least regarding the powers-that-be.

But that doesn't seem to be the situation in Owosso's case, and I just want to say here and now how I'm REALLY impressed by that! For I could just see some "authority" figure here and now saying, "Op! That's it, folks. This theater can never come back again after this incident," but the wise folks of there replying, with a bemused shrug, "Oh is that's so?" Which, if murmured quickly, would sound just like they were saying...

And if I understand correctly, in Native American, "Owosso" means "One Bright Spot."

My tribute to the Lebowsky Center is on line at http://www.waterwinterwonderland.com/flinn.asp

I recall that there was a fire in the City-owned Capitol Theatre ij Yakima, WA. That huge fire was started by a welder's torch who was actually working on the theatre's restoration.

The damage to that theatre was very similar to the Lebowsky. There was a slide show for the Yakima theatre showing the damage and the restoration. From the photos, you would never know that magnificent Priteca-designed theatre had ever been destroyed.

Here is the Cinema Treasures link to the Capitol:

http://cinematreasures.org/theater/3831/

and the Capitol Theatre itself:

http://www.capitoltheatre.org/

More photos:
http://www.shiawasseehistory.com/capitol.html

It was announced on Wednesday, June 27 that the Lebowsky Center will be rebuilt! The OCP will need to raise $100,000 to start the rebuilding process. Most of the Phase One rebuilding will be covered by insurance. Phase One involves building new walls, a new roof, new exterior doors along Park Street, restoring electrical systems, basic lighting and a new roof heating system. They plan on beginning construction in July with the theater completely enclosed by the time winter sets in.

That sounds like relatively good news -- I say "relatively" because I would have much preferred what was still left of the original historic structure been fully restored in every single instance. But hey, in an era when doing away with theaters completely has become so standard, who can be too critical in this instance?

But in this case did they ever find out who the arsonist was and what the motivation was, or is that much still left hanging in the air?

They still don't know who did it or why.

Well that's unsettling. Have there been other arsons that fit this same pattern, or was this the only one? If the answer is the latter, I would presume/hope that factor is being factored in in the rebuilding of this theater so it can't happen again, while I still hold out hope they catch the guy.

There haven't been other arsons like this I'm aware of in the Owosso area. I hope Phase Two of the rebuilding includes installation of a sprinkler system.

Whoops! Just after I wrote my last comment, another big suspicious fire, this one fatal, struck a three-story building just kitty corner from the Lebowsky Center. You can read that news story at http://www.mlive.com/news/flintjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1183643440277950.xml&coll=5 and at http://www.argus-press.com/articles/2007/07/05/news/news1.txt There were two other fires before the Lebowsky Center one. Nearby, the Capitol Bowl bowling alley was destroyed in a 2006 fire and has been rebuilt. In 2005, an almost century old factory building was also destroyed by fire.

That does sound like a pattern there, Gary, while let me ask, is any new type of industry about to be introduced there, such as a gambling casino or something? Or, has there been a sharp new change in political leadership perhaps? I have seen this type of pattern before, such as in the New Jersey seaside resort of Ocean City (10 miles to Atlantic City's south) when Atlantic City went the way of casinos and Ocean City was targetted to be a bedroom community for it. I also saw it in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the time its highly corrupt political machine -- the one that's in place today -- rose up. And fires related to that are still going on in Philadelphia, which is soon to be getting casinos.

On the other hand all the fires you list might be totally unrelated, especially if there's no sort of singular catalyst to tie them all together that way. And in Owosso's case the burned structures ARE getting rebuilt, which totally contrasts the patterns I've seen. But that in itself is a pattern; first a fire, and then the building gets rebuilt. Of the one or two times I have seen that, it was clearly a case of ownership arson each time.

In any event, if they do eventually catch whoever torched the Lebowsky Center, maybe then they'll find out if there was link between all the arsons or not.

A Barton theater organ size 2/7 was installed in the Capitol Theater in 1926.

A photo of the Lebowsky Center interior, taken a month before the fire during The Home Depot makeover, is at http://weblog.live.advance.net/mtlogs/mlive_flintjournalextra/images/2007118OWOSSO-THEATER5.jpg

Here is a 1982 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/c97us7

The year given for this photo is 1985.

1987 Photo

This is a 2009 night photo.

A nice 2009 photo can be seen here.

A postcard depicting Owosso's Capitol Theatre from the early 1940s.

Don...