Artisans at the Granada Theatre work on stenciling the ceiling. The theatre, which opened in 1929, is being restored to its original opulence.
Stenciling work on the ceiling of the Granada theater is progressing, and the new theater’s recreated proscenium arch pieces will be hung this week.
Granada construction manager Bones Ownbey said the crew’s top priority right now is to get everything on the ceiling done in order to get the costly scaffolding out of the building. Ownbey said he would’ve liked to have had the scaffolding gone “about a year ago.”
“We’re going as fast as we can go,” he said. “It’s just the earliest possible moment that I can do it, that’s when they’re gone.”
The sculpted and painted decorative pieces for the proscenium arch will be attached on Thursday, after the crew gets back from its Christmas break. Spaces between the arch shields will then have to be filled with plaster.
“It’ll take us a couple of days to hang ’em, but then it’ll take a while to fill in all the cracks and touch up all the paint,” Ownbey said.
The stencil patterns are all recreated from the original theater. The crew stripped away paint from the ceiling, layer by layer, to find and document the original colors of the stenciling.
Restoration of the theater, which originally opened in 1929, will cost an estimated $2.8 million.
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justthinkin (anonymous) says...
Thank you for what sounds like really nice work. I look forward to seeing the project when it is done. I imagine it will be spectacular.
December 26, 2007 at 3:52 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
joetho (anonymous) says...
Can't wait to see it!
-Joe
December 26, 2007 at 10:51 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
eatasheep69 (anonymous) says...
Yes this should be a really nice to have downtown again. I can't wait for it to reopen. It seems like decades that we've been expecting its restoration.
December 27, 2007 at 7:02 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )