Avalon Atmospheric Theater

Captainp on August 20, 2007 at 10:02 pm

Latest news, from 3 weeks ago, is that they are planning a “theatre, hotel, and restaurant”. Grand openings are being planned. See the news here: http://theavalontheatre.com/news.htm

JimRankin on August 21, 2006 at 7:47 am

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 12:30 pm

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 20, 2005 at 7:03 am

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.’”

---

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.

JimRankin on September 22, 2005 at 9:28 am

There is only one antique photo of the interior that I know of, and it shows only the rear half of the auditorium. There is also one vintage photo of the facade. When I find a Web site with the proper terms to upload them to, I will scan my two xeroxes of the photos and you will be able to view them there. I will post the link when I select a free service that has some longevity of displayed images.

Patsy on September 22, 2005 at 1:31 am

Jim: You being in the Milwaukee area makes me ask the following question……do you and/or any local preservation groups plan to save this atmospheric? It’s not an Eberson atmospheric, but an atmospheric none the less and worth saving!

TimothyRuf on June 18, 2005 at 2:58 pm

The (City of Milwaukee) Common Council this week approved a $75,000 grant to help with the estimated $1 million remodeling tab at the Avalon, 2469-2483 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.

http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/jun05/334641.asp

From the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinal – June 15th, 2005.

There is hope after all.

AndrewWillenson on March 30, 2005 at 5:17 am

I have another comment to make. There are about 20 apartments in the building. Fixed up, there should be high demand for apartments, or even condominiums in the location of the Avalon. There is an ambulance garage next to the building. Perhaps that could be expanded to provide parking for the housing units in the Avalon building. Garage space for the theater itself might also be desirable, although there is (or was) a parking lot across the street.

This theater reopening is very, very good news. Now for the Grand Cinema, in downtown Milwaukee…….

Andrew N. Willenson

LLOYD777 on March 14, 2005 at 6:33 pm

FROM: RICHARD SLUPSKI,MONTEREY.CA MARCH 14,2005

TO: ALL THEATER PALACE LOVERS
I grew up in Milwaukee and remember the AVALON very foundly . In the early 70’s my dad had a machine shop on Ward st. and I loved going to see the twinking “sky” of the AVALON" . This is great news that the AVALON is being brought back to it’s former glory because in Monterey they , the comunity ,and the goldenstatetheater group are well on the way to TOTALLY RESTORE inside and out the STATE THEATER . Last Fri the 11 Mar. I enjoyed with at least 600 paying patrons the HAROLD LLOYD silent “Grandma’s Boy” with a live all woman orchestra which was enjoyable beyond tears of joy with many laughs shared by movie lovers from 4 to 100+ . We also have a theater organ peservation group in California Which we also enjoyed a Charlie Chaplin short with Robert Israel on the Mighty Wurlitzer Theater Pipe Organ . Mr. Israel also composed and condcted the music For the Harold LLOYD flick. All across the country comunities are getting together and helping restore and mantain these theaters and volunteering as ushers and ticket takers when we have these special monthly shows .

JimRankin on February 2, 2005 at 6:58 pm

A BREATH OF HOPE FOR THE AVALON?

According to this news item:
View link
Milwaukee’s long-closed AVALON theatre of 1929 “may” become a combination movie house/book store.

Let us hope that this is a breath of real hope for our beloved AVALON THEATRE. There have been many hopes dashed and failures noted in the past, we can only hope that it will be different this time. The owner has played disingenuously with potential buyers in the past, according to sources, but perhaps he is now realizing a combined purchasing power that may be able to meet his reportedly stiff price. The owner of the ROSEBUD cinema did approach Mr. Ellsworth to purchase, but the reported one million plus price was out of his reach, and that of most others. This is the reason that he is opening a block farther south in the old Kohl’s food store and will share that space with a new branch of Outpost Foods. We all wish him well there, I’m sure.

Several people have wondered why the people of Bay View don’t reach out and collectively buy the theatre. That sounds like a nice idea, but it requires sound business sense and experience to run it as a movie house in a day when few single screen cinemas succeed. No one with that experience has stepped forward to offer to run the place assuming it is bought by someone intent on runnint it as a movie house. The current owner, architect Craig Ellsworth, did try to change it to a live performance venue, providing that the city granted him a beer/liquor license, but that was refused 3 times already, partially due to the concerns of neighbors that it would become a hangout for ‘DODs’ (Drunk and Disorderlies, as the cops put it). Could a new owner get the license? Possibly, but that does not solve the parking question that filling the thousand plus seats would bring. Yes, people elsewhere are accustomed to walking a distance from their cars, but not so in Milw. For this reason, the neighborhood merchants must largely rely upon locals for patronage. Is there enough there to keep a movie house afloat? Let’s hope the new ROSEBUD SOUTH proves so.

For those who ask about the former WARNER (now the closed GRAND) downtown, the situation is that the Symphony cannot now afford to purchase and rehab it as needed. Marcus theatres has almost 20 years remaining on the lease which requires them to maintain it in good condition. The owners of the land under the theatre are keeping a close eye on the situation, and have shown the site to several prospects that would use it in an entertainment vein, but as a “Business Journal” article of July 1st, 1995 brought out after the then double cinemas closed, said, it is really too big for most groups, yet too small for other developments. It was an ideal size in 1931 when this beautiful movie palace was created, but times have changed, and even with two screens (and no parking) it could not pay its way. Marcus must pay about $30,000 a year in combined taxes, not including some heat and power, so it is not cheap to let it sit idle, but one wonders what will become of it years from now when they no longer pay those bills. This lesson is not lost on prospective buyers of the AVALON, since they can’t and don’t want to end up paying upkeep for a relic, no matter how attractive or nostalgic it may be. Our PABST, RIVERSIDE and ORIENTAL appear to be ‘saved,’ but in fact they also skid by on thin ice. Most people give words of encouragement to potential owners/operators of these former movie palaces, but will they also contribute their funds in the form of REGULAR patronage, or is it easier to stay home and pop in a DVD?

JimRankin on January 11, 2005 at 4:42 pm

This depends upon whom one asks. If you read the previous story about the new cinema to be built in Bay View, you will find toward the bottom the statement that owner Craig Ellsworth wants $2.5 million for the building, but others claim that he isn’t really interested in selling else he would price the building realistically. Others say that he is just stubborn and miffed that the city has repeatedly refused to grant a liquor/beer license to him and so he is deliberately trying to antagonize the neighbors. He has demolished the box office, and removed the marquee name sign, but beyond that I do not know what damages have been done inside, though the item about the removal of the organ, above, should give one some idea. Approach with caution.

DavidHurlbutt on December 17, 2004 at 10:46 pm

Wasn"t this proposed site of the new ROSEBUD once the site of Frosty’s Drive In. Frosty"s was moved to the corner of the lot next to the railroad tracks when the National Tea Store was built there. When the National closed Kohl’s took over and opened their store there. Sometime later the Frosty’s building was torn down for additonal parking.

AndrewWillenson on October 30, 2004 at 1:35 am

From the last posting, done by Jim Rankin (from a letter by Fred Wolfgram), it appears the Avalon is beginning to deteriorate. HOW SAD!