Posted 9:37 pm Sunday, November 01, 2009
Overton Theater Glows As Restoration Begins To Breathe Life Into Old Landmark
By MAEGAN McGOWEN
Feature Writer
Pinholes of light shine through boarded-up ticket windows at the old Overton Theater. Old stage curtains hang like drooping eyebrows and rain drips through the ceiling, collecting into a puddle on the floor.
Feature Writer
Pinholes of light shine through boarded-up ticket windows at the old Overton Theater. Old stage curtains hang like drooping eyebrows and rain drips through the ceiling, collecting into a puddle on the floor.
Sitting in the water is a lawnmower, an old shopping cart and a piano -- but when you're standing in the balcony, the potential of the building is obvious with high ceilings and a long wooden stage.
"The theater was built around 1935," John Cohagen, carpenter, said. "It was a very plush movie theater and it stayed open until about 1965. It was the last theater in Overton to go out of business."
A historical photograph shows the Overton Theater in the heyday of the Oil Boom of the 1930s.
Cohagen has a unique attachment to the old building -- he used to go to movies there as a child, and his father-in-law was a projectionist there in the 1940s.
"It was a nice place," he said, bracing one foot against the rail of the balcony. "Movies were 15 cents, and it was a popular place to go. I remember there was an old candy counter here, because it was my favorite place, and I could get a coke for 5 cents, candy for 5 cents and a movie ticket, and I was ready to go."
The sleepy little town holds a jewel, but like the old typewriters gathering dust with missing letters like missing teeth, it needs elbow grease to bring it back to life.
Entrepreneur Loretta Posey (top right) with her husband, John, acquired the theater to convert it into a cultural hub for the area. Posey’s vision is to bring revitalization to the downtown area.
The restoration of the theater came about after the building was bought by Loretta and John Posey as one of several building restoration projects in downtown Overton.
"We bought it because we have a heart for this community, and we've had a business here for well over ten years," she said. "We wanted to do dinner and a movie and have live performances with bands, plays and if the stage is big enough, ballet."
The building, with leaks, rotted wood and old wiring, has provided quite a challenge for the work crews, Cohagen said.
"The size of the building has been difficult," he said. "There's just so much volume. We're going to have to replace part of the stage and build scaffolding to the ceiling to work on it, which makes it a lot of fun, especially for a guy with bad knees."
It's going to take about two years of work to complete, he said, but the town is already starting to take notice of the project -- especially when the old theater lights began to glow again.
"Boy did that get the whole town stirred up," Mrs. Posey said, the bare bulbs of the theater lights lighting her face. "People were oh so excited, wondering what they could do, and that tells you what kind of people we have here in Overton."
The skeleton of the theater remain graceful and curving, from the light fixtures to the blue cobalt tile that outlines the building's exterior.
"We have one original light fixture that survived, and it's taken about two weeks for me to copy the original and build new ones," Cohagen said, gesturing to several brand-new fixtures hanging from the walls, ready to be painted. "A fixture over the exit also partially survived and I traced it out and cut it out with a scroll saw."
Layers of old paint peek through the walls, from mint green to a purplish-pink shade that Cohagen believes to be the original color.
"We're probably going to go with painting the original color, or as close as possible," he said. "Most of the paint is the second color, and why one wall is green and one is white, I don't know."
The walls, cut with a unique diamond pattern, will be restored, but finding the material hasn't been easy, he said.
"It's brown soundboard, which is a cardboard like material which has been compressed," he said. "It's taken about three weeks for me to find it in Tyler, and you can imagine how much fun that's going to be to hang!"
There have also been some exciting finds -- from an old typewriter to a handmade knife in the wall workers used to carve patterns into the material.
"We've also found an old popcorn machine and a hot-dog machine, but sadly, they don't work anymore," he said.
The building is going to take some modernization, he said, from a new air conditioning system to replacing the front with new neon lights and re-plastering the marquee.
"Original looking materials are hard to find," he said, "and we're going to have to replace a lot of the tile and wood. It'll keep us very busy."
Piles of electrical wire nest in one corner of the building, and old poster holders sit empty on the walls -- but with the careful work of Cohagen and his crew, the theater will be restored to its former beauty.
"This isn't something that we really planned," Mrs. Posey said, "It just kind of happened. We'd love it if other people in the community bought old buildings and helped us too -- and the opening of the theater will bring people into Overton -- that is our hope."
