Students at colleges around Boston come here for a combination of the old, historic community and the new, modern flair of a bustling city. Tourists come here just to take pictures of some of the most historic landmarks in the country. Less of a metropolis than New York, but more historic than Chicago, Boston is the perfect place to live. But what happens when those historic landmarks begin to disappear?
On Sept. 3, The Boston Globe reported that the historic Colonial Theatre will close for at least one year after the currently-running “The Book of Mormon” closes Oct. 11. The venue, owned by Emerson College, will undergo a complete renovation in which only the stage will be kept in place.
Emerson’s vice president for communication, Andy Tiedemann, told the Globe, “all options are on the table,” explaining that while the Colonial could still potentially be used for staging theatrical events, it will also serve other purposes to benefit the school. Emerson purchased the theatre in 2006, and the Citi Performing Arts Center has been under contract with the school since 2011. This contract ends in October.
Many of us probably glazed past this news. But yesterday, Globe’s theatre critic, Don Aucoin, penned an article questioning the closing of such a historic venue as the Colonial — and this made us take a step back. According to the Globe, the Colonial opened in 1900 and has remained at the same address on Boylston Street ever since. In addition to being home for multiple national tours of Broadway productions over the past few years, including “Once,” “American Idiot” and “Mamma Mia,” the Theatre also housed what has come to be legendary work. Stephen Sondheim’s out-of-town trial of “Follies,” what is thought to be one of his best works, premiered at the Colonial, as did the first collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Aucoin wrote.
While this change may be beneficial to students and faculty at Emerson, it may be the start of a slippery slope for other historical venues and infrastructure in the city. Even though the venue isn’t as old as other landmark buildings in the city, 115 years certainly isn’t a short life span. After all, the United States in its entirety is much younger than most other parts of the world. Our duty as citizens of this city, and on a greater scale our nation, is to preserve these landmarks, whether they are theaters or the graves of our Founding Fathers. We have to remember that although change and modernization can be good, there are some things worth preserving to show how far we have come. Boston’s charm comes from its elegant blend of both old infrastructure and new creations.
Emerson has been vague about the changes they will make to the theatre, and we can only hope that this still leaves room for consideration of the beauty and grace the Colonial holds inside its four walls. “Renovation” is a broad term, but mentions of using the theatre for means other than performance has us shaking in our boots. Is it possible that the intimate, 1,700-seat theatre will become a mere memory, taken over by new flooring, shiny walls and a lack of performance art?
But we can’t only blame Emerson for this trend — our own Boston University has been known to “renovate” historic buildings, such as the Kilachand Honors College (previously Shelton Hall) in 2012, to make them conducive to students’ lives. Obviously, catering to these students is both necessary and important. We all want a nice place to live. But perhaps we should consider the population living in Boston for more than nine months per year when we take to the streets and renovate historic landmarks.
Maybe we can trust Emerson, as a performing arts school, to keep the historic value of the theatre in mind during renovations. They can follow previously set examples from artistic venues such as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which stayed true to Gardner’s wishes for the museum’s architecture to remain constant after her death by adding an addition onto the building, rather than changing the original structure. While this may not be possible for the Colonial due to its tight location on Emerson’s campus, there is still a possibility for the maintenance of historic elements of the space.
But there has been backlash to renovations such as this in the past — in April, the Globe reported that historic churches in South Boston and Roxbury would remain “churches” on the outside and feature apartments on the inside in response to Boston’s housing crisis. Residents felt sentimental about the churches’ value in the communities, and urged the city not to renovate these spaces. Again, it would seem that preserving some historic aspects of our city is more important than having a fresh, new space that erases the past.
It is projects such as this that begin to eliminate pieces of history. And while many people might not care about one of many theaters in the downtown district, including the Boston Opera House, the Cutler Majestic Theatre, the Wang, the Shubert, the Wilbur and a select few others, Boston does have an incredible artistic community that thrives upon museums and theaters. Imagine being able to stand on the un-renovated, historic Colonial Theatre’s stage and imagine the past performers who have stood in your place. If the stage is rebuilt, many young actors won’t have that feeling.
Boston prides itself on its history. Let’s try not to erase even the tiniest pieces of it.
