Many of you may have heard recently of the Metropolitan Opera House on North Broad Street in Philadelphia recently re-opening as a live music venue. LiveNation did a fantastic restoration of the 1908 building, and it is a prime example of how re-using historic buildings for its original or similar purpose brings historic preservation to the spotlight and can inspire others to do the same. They would not have gotten as much publicity or interest if they had demolished it and put up a new modern concert venue. The building has been continually used as a church since the opera house closed, and is still used as a church when there are no concerts. If you would like to learn more, here is the website- http://themetphilly.com/ I encourage you to look at the photos both in 'history' and in 'photos' to see before and after.
Closer to home, two venues stand out as being preservation in action regarding music venues- Tower Theater and the in-progress Lansdowne Theater.
Tower Theater was just announced as being one of the top 10 live music venues IN THE COUNTRY! This is fantastic news and hopefully will encourage more bands to visit and more concert-goers to attend these events. The whole list is at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/10-best-live-music-venues-in-america-767070/ The Tower website is http://venue.thetowerphilly.com/
Historic Lansdowne Theater Corporation will soon start the interior restoration of the theater. They have been working on it for many years and will also soon finish the exterior, having recently received CDBG money for facade improvements. They've already finished the exterior lobby and the ticket booth. We are all very excited to see how this theater will look when it is finished (in 2020). It is planned to be similar to the Keswick Theater in Glenside, and be a big boon to the local economy. More info is at http://www.lansdownetheater.org/
Historic preservation takes many forms, some of it is just maintaining existing buildings, whether houses, stores, or concert venues, and some of it is restoring buildings to their former glory and using it for the same purpose, or even adaptively reusing the buildings for something new but still maintaining its character. None of these theater projects would be possible without two groups of people- the ones who are in charge of the building and work tirelessly to maintain it and restore it, and those that buy the tickets and attend the concerts. Continue keeping these places alive and viable by attending concerts and promoting historic preservation, and congratulating (and helping out if you can) those that own the theaters on all of their preservation efforts.
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