Avalon Theater

d0nut on February 9, 2011 at 8:03 pm

Here is a page from Organ Piper Pizza here in Milwaukee (Greenfield) claiming to have part of the Avalon organ:

http://www.organpiperpizza.com/wurlitzer.htm

Can anyone confirm?

Chuck1231 on May 5, 2010 at 10:26 pm

2010 B&W photo of the Avalon Theatre.
View link

kencmcintyre on March 14, 2010 at 8:45 pm

Here is an October 1970 ad from the Milwaukee Journal:
http://tinyurl.com/yz82anl

ProjectionistTimmyBoy on June 14, 2009 at 11:44 pm

Does anyone have a picture of the beautiful old box office that used to be in front of the theatre? Anyone who lived in Bay View when the Avalon was still operating remembers it and the life sized Crypt Keeper that occupied it.

It was a sad day when I walked past it to see nothing but an empty space where it used to be. I hope somebody had the heart to save it so it didn’t end up in a scrap pile somewhere.

I want to feature the Avalon Theatre is all its past glory on the cover of a comic book I’m developing with an artist friend of mine but I can’t find any pics of the old box office for reference.

Please E-mail me any pictures you may have or any info to point me in the right direction.

lostmemory on April 26, 2009 at 5:34 am

1985 Photo

MiltonSmith on February 16, 2008 at 11:40 pm

Triplex? that would be terrible. chop it up further, great idea.

lostmemory on February 3, 2008 at 10:14 am

I don’t see a specific date given for this information, but it appears that the Avalon “is still well over a year away from being re-opened”.

lostmemory on February 3, 2008 at 9:15 am

A few more photos from 2007 can be seen here.

lostmemory on March 10, 2007 at 1:18 pm

This is a recent photo of the former Avalon Theater.

JimRankin on August 20, 2006 at 11:47 pm

Yes, sad to say, the island box office as well as the name sign were removed by the previous owner. He was determined to let residents know that he was going to convert the theatre to office space if the city continued to refuse his applications for liquor and cabaret licenses(he never got the licenses). He had large plackards mounted over the attraction boards of the marquee advertising “Office Space For Rent” but it appears that there was no progress to such conversion indoors at the time of sale to the current owner. No doubt ticket sales, when they resume, will be handeled from a table in the ticket lobby as they have been for over 20 years now, though it is possible to reconstruct the box office. The MODJESKA did just that about ten years ago.

Hal on April 11, 2006 at 4:30 am

This is not really Avalon related, but Jim Rankin mentions the pipe organ in the Weill Center in Sheboygan, for what it’s worth, the organ is a Kimball that was originally installed in the Madison, WI Orpheum Theatre. Marty Dohm removed the organ many years ago and for a long time it was in his home in the Madison area. He then had it in storage after he sold his home, but sort of playable while in storage, it then made it’s way up to Sheboygan. Just thought you’d like to know, it sounds great in it’s new location too!

JimRankin on October 19, 2005 at 11:03 pm

This fine article appeared in the free Milwaukee monthly newspaper “The Bay View Compass” (www.bayviewcompass.com) and even features comments by yours truly in this October 2005 issue:

“A LOOK INSINDE THE AVALON"
by Michael Timm
The 21st century neo-American dream includes sitting on the couch with a remote, controlling your home theater, 6.1 surround sound, and projection screen television in HDTV.

But this age of increasingly personalized, private entertainment follows an American entertainment age as opulent as it was public and as grand as new technologies are staggering.

Poised at one intersection between past and future stands a monument to that lost age, when the movie-going experience was as important as the film shown. It’s a Bay View movie theater built in 1929â€"and a structure worthy of being called a theatreâ€"the Avalon Theatre.

Barczak’s Vision
Though projected clouds have long since fled from the Avalon’s ceiling where electric stars still twinkle on a field of blueâ€"and in some places the sky is literally falling where the plaster has caved inâ€"the Avalon Theatre still bears undeniable charm.

Lee Barczak, who purchased the Avalon in April, will unveil specific renovation plans in the theater at 2473 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. at 6:30pm Thursday, Oct. 20.

Barczak, president of the Greendale investment firm Morgan Kenwood Ltd. who has since organized the Avalon Society, provided a glimpse inside the long-neglected theater at a Sept. 29 Forward Bay View meeting and briefly discussed his vision for the theater which closed in 2000.

“One of the things I think is important is maintaining this kind of architecture,” Barczak said.

Barczak plans to renovate the Avalon as a multi-screen movie house and “multiuse entertainment facility,” while respecting its architectural heritage as a movie palace.

“We’ve gotta have movies here,” said Barczak, “I’d love to see some interesting concerts. I would also like to see us operating with a much more interesting concessions program.”

He hopes this would include a liquor license to serve alcohol during movies or performances.

When the previous owner applied for a liquor license to make the Avalon more competitive, he drew community ire, in part because residents feared rowdy crowds leaving rock concerts. But Barczak said he envisions performance music that would not draw particularly rowdy crowds. He mentions jazz, blues, or folk as likely.

He has the support of Tony Zielinski, 14th district alderman, who supported a $75,000 grant passed in June to help offset renovation costs.

“I think we’ll get support,” Barczak said, for the liquor license.

Barczak said he intends to make Milwaukee’s first theater designed for talking pictures into “a theater for the whole family.” He’s received feedback diverse in specific wishes (with interest in independent, first-run, and foreign films) but unified in “overwhelming support in terms of bringing the beautiful theater back to its original glory.”

Barczak also said he has a “commitment for one film festival.”

A Virtual Tour
“I’ve seen a lot of neighborhood houses like this, and this has a great deal of charm,” said local theater historian Jim Rankin. “It isn’t genius. It just fell together well.”

The Avalon was designed by Russell Barr Williamson, an architectural disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright who also designed the Eagle’s Club but is more known for his numerous Prairie School houses throughout southeastern Wisconsin and the Midwest.

Milwaukee’s last atmospheric theater (those with interiors designed to make audiences feel they are under open air), the Avalon was once one of six.

Rankin said the exterior façade that originally rose to an apex was struck by lightning. The original Avalon sign was vertical. And at one time, a Paramount style marquee with chasing light bulbs overhung the sidewalk.

Inside, a cozy ticket lobby Rankin calls “a deliberate emotional airlock” opens into the red carpeted grand lobby expanse beneath a wrought iron chandelier, a black twisted column, and false wood ceiling beams beside the curving stair leading up to the unseen balcony. This transition effectively transported movie-goers into another place and time where a variety of architectural styles created a baroque, exotic, transcendent environment.
Portals between the lobby and auditorium were originally draped, possibly in luxurious velvets, Rankin said.

Inside the auditorium, flanked by arcades supporting Spanish Mediterranean style roof tiles, the blue ceiling and its star lights make the neck crane upward.

Shrubbery originally lined the auditorium’s horizon line, and at one point in its history the Avalon was actually known as the Garden because of this attribute.

“They just took a real shrub and sprayed it with glycerin,” Rankin said. He mentions a new, safer technique that could replicate the same effect by spray painting aluminum foil.

The original twinkling lights system was replaced in the 1960s, Rankin said.

The Avalon cost $1 million by the time it was completed in 1929, opening just five months before Black Tuesday.
“Most people didn’t realize how expensive these buildings were. I don’t know what to compare them to. Nothing’s really enormous like movie palaces anymore,” Rankin said.

Costs and Challenges
In 2005, Barczak estimates it will cost $1.2 to $1.5 million just to get the Avalon into a workable condition.
“There’s a lot of structural things that need to be done,” he said. “Our first challenge will be the roof.”
Repairs will begin shortly on roof damage and several leaks, and he hopes to contract an architect by the year’s end.

The theater’s Wurlitzer pipe organ 2004 was removed and stored by its owner, the Dairyland Theatre Organ Society, when fears that further neglect would cause more serious damage.

It now seems unlikely the organ, damaged by plaster, water, mold and mildew, will return to the theater.
“I would like it but I can’t say it would happen,” Barczak said.

Who will operate the theater may be revealed Oct. 20. Discussion had included Landmark Corporation, which operates Milwaukee’s Downer and Oriental theaters, but Barczak did not yet indicate his final decision.

“They’re interested in the theater. The biggest issue we have with Landmark is we basically have to turn it over to them,” said Barczak, who is concerned about making sure the already risky theater operation would make business sense in the context of the Milwaukee market. “We have to be very careful with how we structure this.”
Barczak did say his plan will include at least two movie screens, though he did not elaborate on where these would be or if the current main screen would remain intact.

“You cannot survive with a one-screen theater,” he said.

Currently a 1954 Cinemascope screen hangs in the 9,500 square foot, 1670-capacity main auditorium, with 780 seats in the balcony. This screen was placed in front of the proscenium arch over the main stage to accommodate the widescreen films of the 1950s and 60s that attempted to woo audiences away from their television sets. It obscures two twisted columns that flanked the original screen.

Another smaller screen was added in the 1990s and currently occupies the backstage area, with seats transplanted from the main auditorium.

Lack of theater insulation will make today’s heating costs expensive for the Avalon, Rankin said. Electric bills would also be expensive, he estimates.

Transforming the Avalon into live performance space also poses challenges because the Cinemascope screen cuts off part of the stage and affects acoustics. Limited backstage space would also challenge larger performance groups, Rankin said. “It’s designed only for the smallest vaudeville.”

An American Cathedral
Renovating the Avalon is an enterprise counting on a best-of-both-worlds approach to 21st century entertainment cultureâ€"combining the comforts of a home theater with the experience of seeing a movie publicly in the American architectural equivalent of a cathedral.

It’s something that needs to be done correctly, not fast, he said, with the earliest potential reopening in 2007.
“We want people to be patient,” Barczak said. “This is not a project that is going to happen quickly.”

Rankin is hopeful, but realizes the perfect storm of challenges on the Avalon’s horizonâ€"no parking, expensive renovations, expensive upkeep and a declining movie-going market.

“Must it support itself or is it a subsidized museum with no parking?” he asks rhetorically. For the Avalon to succeed, he said, “It would be a miracle.”

It’s a miracle Barczak hopes to accomplish with patience, perseverance and good business sense.
“I’ve always been a movie nut,” Barczak said. “It’s kind of in my blood, my background.”

And Barczak, a Pio Nono (now Thomas More) High School grad, has historic links to the area.
“I had many a date in this particular theater,” he recalls.

A layer of plaster dust now covers much of the Avalon’s drafty interior, and some of its seats have been ripped out and stacked backstage. But the cavernous space remains capped by the blue vault of artificial sky whose stars still twinkle. Lit harshly by spotlights, the silent auditorium evokes the eerie underwater wreckage of the Titanic, and it’s not hard to imagine Barczak reconstructing the Avalon’s gilded grandeur in his mind’s eye.
“When people come in here,” he says, “I want them to just say, ‘Wow.’”

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Theis newspaper will keep this front page article in their archive for a limited time, but without the 5x7-inch color photo of the Avalon’s balcony ceiling showing a breach caused by rain water. Let us hope that tonight’s press conference reveals successful and artistic plans.