V
D espite its several churches, the religion of downtown
Athens is music. For many, it is not Sunday morn
ing that fills souls, but Saturday night. R.E.M., Pylon
and The B-52s were the founding apostles, Elephant 6 the
reformation. Many of the latter-day saints will be seen on
stages at this year's AthFest. And as in the early centuries of
Christianity, the Athens music scene prizes its own holy relics.
But instead of pieces of the True Cross or crypt-kept remains,
Athens' artifacts are fliers and rare recordings; trestles and
reappropriated steeples; the sanctuaries that formed anywhere
a drum kit and two amps could fit.
So, when a fire nearly leveled the famed Georgia Theatre in
June of 2009, owner Wilmot Greene knew he had to preserve
whatever he could of the storied venue. Little remained but the
four original walls, perilously close to collapse and standing as
if tradition alone—the long memory of stand
ing-kept them up. Somehow, the iconic mar- 2
quee and box office escaped almost untouched. ^
Nearly all else was lost, but Greene's team 3
would sift through the rubble to find salvage- 5
able pieces to return to their places'in the new i
building. The charred cross beams were hewed 3
to reveal beautiful 300-year-old heart pine to
adorn the new bars. Even panes of melted glass
were gleaned to be reused.
The old Theatre will live in the new
one, which is scheduled to open in August.
Certainly, it would have been far cheaper to
have knocked down the 120-year-old structure
and started over. Greene could have simply col
lected the insurance money and sold the prop
erty. Greene could have cashed out. There were
many easy routes and one very difficult one: to
rebuild the Theatre with the care and attention
the landmark deserved—that fans deserved. To
make it a sort of crusade. Or, as Greene says,
"Damn the torpedoes."
The primary mission was to save the original
walls. This seemingly simply decision meant
more than a year of work before construction could begin.
The fire left the entire support system for the walls damaged
beyond repair. The building had to be thoroughly gutted, leav
ing the roofless walls standing without supports. Even worse,
the 19th-century building's walls were built without a founda
tion. It was simply brick on dirt. With the supports gone, a
strong enough wind could have brought the walls down So,
as each charred support beam was removed, a temporary steel
support had to take its place. It was a delicate process, like a
huge, dangerous puzzle.
Not only did Greene's team find the old walls without a
foundation, but they were not square, either. Not even close,
really. In the unfinished interior of the Theatre, the old walls
are visibly imprecise against the level and plumb lines of the
newly built structures. Architectural engineering of the 1880s
was not an exact science, and irregularly askew structures were
the norm. In fact, the Theatre's old walls were so inexact and
lopsided that Greene's crew effectively had to build a modern,
precisely squared building just inside the old walls.
This proved to be a recurring theme, this tension between
the historic nature of the building and modernity. Before
construction could even begin, a Kafka-esque series of bureau
cratic trials had to be overcome. Greene found the rebuilding
project and its needs wedged between the often contradictory
demands of historic preservation and modern building codes.
A full 13 months were spent trapped in the nightmare of sat
isfying opposing bureaucracies. It was during this time that
the Theatre faced its most dire existential crises. "There were
days when I thought the best thing to do would've been to sell
the dirt and knock down the walls," Greene says. He compares
the ordeal to the movie Brazil, Terry Gilliam's classic depic
tion of convoluted bureaucracy: "I'd submit form QS-283 and
they would say, "there's a 30-day waiting period," and on the
29th day they would say I had to have a Q5-Q24 and there's a
30-day waiting period on that."
Greene felt as though certain forces were acting against
the rebuilding effort, either consciously or by their mere pres
ence. "I was sitting in meetings with people who were using
their power to enforce a point of view that wasn't best for the
Theatre," he recalls. "There were days it seemed insane to con
tinue." But spending day after day at the Prince Avenue Huddle
House, which had become his de facto office—"Because you
could get all the coffee you wanted," Greene admits; he was
also losing sleep—he was approached by Athenians one after
another who shared memories of the Georgia Theatre with him.
"I met my wife there," he'd hear. "I saw my first movie
there. My dad took me to a concert there." All of the hard
work, Greene was reminded, was to preserve the character of
the Theatre. The pieces salvaged weren't just simple brick,
wood and steel, but pieces of a landmark in which memories
were embedded. Like religious relics, the preserved pieces
would be visible reminders of the invisible.
With the building entirely gutted down to the dirt, a stan
dard (and much less expensive) music venue could have been
built. All that is essentially required is a stage and a room with
a bar in the back. But, again, Greene was not simply build
ing another club, but preserving the Georgia Theatre. Greene
became a minor expert in theater construction. He can speak
expertly on stage elements and the many varieties of curtain
ing. Even the traditionally sloped floor of the old Theatre will
be found in the new room. The aging balcony returns, rebuilt,
now improved with a tiered design that maximizes sight lines
to the stage. So, while boasting its many noticeable improve
ments, the new Theatre will welcome back concertgoers with
the preservation of its familiar layout..
Topping (literally) the modernizing improve
ments will be the restaurant and bar on the
new Theatre's roof. Looking out over downtown
and campus is what will surely become a popu
lar spot, featuring a kitchen presided over by
the White Tiger's Ken Manring. With a separate
entrance on the southeast corner of the the
atre, the restaurant will be open for both lunch
and dinner. Greene and Manring intend the res
taurant to have "a little something for every
body," with chicken, pork and tofu on a limited
but high-quality, chef-designed menu.
Excitement for the new restaurant is easy to
imagine, but Greene and the Theatre need it to-
be successful, in addition to continued success
downstairs in the venue. The painstaking pres
ervation of the Georgia Theatre was not inex
pensive, and the venture relied on a significant
amount of financing from a local bank. So,
more than just a visionary idea, the restaurant
is necessary to supplement the income from
downstairs. The next 20 years of the Theatre's
revenue will be dedicated to its massive debt
load. Even after the last nail is driven, the work of bringing the
Theatre back to life will continue.
"Somehow, here we are." Wilmot Greene is on the stage of
the rebuilt Theatre, looking out at the familiar room. Despite
Greene's intimacy with every step of the rebuilding, he cannot
fully account for the product. He cannot quite believe what he
sees. "There was some sort of divine intervention," he muses.
There have been interventions—many of them—but they
were interventions of memory in the face of loss, a refusal
to lose the beloved venue. It is, in fact, a collective wish to
see an act of fate overturned that has revived the Georgia
Theatre. Greene recalls the countless memories shared at the
Huddle House "office," on the street, in the newspaper, from
bands, from fans: "If it weren't for things like that, I probably
would've given up." Thank God he didn't.
Matthew Puiver
The Georgia Theatre is remade in its own image
j
L.
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