PB seeks to restore building
’20s theater gets grant to fix roof
PINE BLUFF — Like many people, Pearl Brady has an attic full of memories.
Among the stale-smelling high school yearbooks, well-worn dresses and faded photographs of times gone by are a set of ticket stubs from Pine Bluff’s Saenger Theatre.
The 89-year-old Saenger Theatre hasn’t hosted an audience since 2008, but during its heyday, thousands of shows and movies were presented there to those eager for first-class entertainment.
Brady, 84, lives in Indiana now, but her memories of going to the theater with “boys who courted me” are strong.
Brady has been eagerly following recent efforts to renovate the theater, calling the historic site “an old friend.”
“How wonderful it would be to be able to see it restored,” Brady said. “It would be like seeing myself as a girl again.”
While a full renovation of the 1924 structure is likely decades away, work is slowly progressing to prevent the building from further decay.
Pine Bluff, which owns the Saenger Theatre, recently received a $23,000 grant from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program to complete roof repairs. The city will kick in nearly $8,000 in funds, and Old Town Theatres Centre Inc. will add nearly $4,000.
The City Council is expected to approve the mea-
sure at its next meeting Nov. 18.
Pine Bluff aldermen voted last year to assume ownership of the theater — at no cost — from Old Town Theatres Centre Inc., a nonprofit organization that had tried for several years to restore the structure.
Under the ownership agreement, Old Town will continue to manage day-today operations at the theater, as well as help secure donations for future restoration.
The latest round of funding will be used to restore and repair tiles on the decorative mansard roof, city officials said. In May, repairs were made to fix severe leaks that were slowly eating away at the building.
In all, more than $89,000 — primarily grant funds — has been spent on the theater in the past two years.
But much more is needed before the marquee lights up again.
The Pine Bluff Saenger Theatre’s sister theater, the Perot Theatre in Texarkana, Texas, faced a similar fate during the 1970s but was saved after Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot chipped in nearly $1 million to kick-start a renovation campaign.
Perot gave $870,000, and the community raised more than $1 million in donations, said Jennifer Lockman, marketing coordinator for the Perot Theatre.
“It helps to have that big donation to start things off with,” she said. “Without it, it’s just tough.”
The Perot Theatre was built as a Saenger Theatre in 1924.
Today, only a handful of Saenger Theatres remain. The Saenger Amusement Company built more than 300 of its lavish theaters across the South during the 1920s. There were three built in Arkansas. The Saenger Theatres in Hope and Helena-West Helena were lost decades ago.
Old Town Theatres Centre Inc. Executive Director Jack Stradley said roof repairs to Pine Bluff’s Saenger Theatre will prevent further damage inside the building’s already-crumbling interior.
Getting an old building “in the dry” is the first step in saving it, he said.
Stradley is pouring tens of thousands of his own dollars into restoring the old Community Theater, which sits adjacent to the Saenger Theatre on Second Avenue in downtown Pine Bluff.
Built in 1880, the Community Theater is much smaller than its cousin across the street. It has just 150 seats, compared to the nearly 1,800 inside the Saenger Theatre.
Stradley said he is hoping to create an intimate setting for live, vaudevillian-style shows at the Community Theater, which is scheduled to open in January.
Eventually, Stradley said he hopes this area of the city will be known as an entertainment district.
He said restoring both theaters, along with other buildings in the area, will “build a great momentum for downtown.”
The old theaters have “gotten into my blood,” he said.
Efforts to create arts districts are underway in other Arkansas cities as well.
In El Dorado, a $25 million renovation of the 1929 Rialto Theater is about to start. And under the umbrella of El Dorado Festivals & Events, the city is gearing up to become a “festival” city, officials said.
In Rogers, a historic opera house is being restored by a local resident, and the city’s Little Theatre is making a comeback, hosting professional shows and attracting crowds.
From her Indiana home, Brady said she hopes Pine Bluff is as successful as other cities have been in renovating “old treasures.”
She said she will continue to closely monitor progress at the Saenger Theatre — and not just because that’s where she first held hands with a boy.
Brady said she knows Pine Bluff “needs that shot in the arm, that something special to breathe life back into the city again. The Saenger can do that, you know? There is magic inside that old building. I saw it once. And I want to see it again. I want others, young folks, to see it, too.”