Monthly Meeting
Driver Opera House Restoration, Inc. meets the fourth Wednesday each month at 7 p.m. Visit driveroperahouse.com or call (608) 776-4709 for information.
DARLINGTON - The Driver Opera House doesn't announce itself from the street, hidden as it is on the second floor of a handsome Cream City brick building downtown at the corner of Main Street and Ann Street above the Bargain Nook Thrift and Resale Store.
The charms of this flat-floor opera house, built in 1883, have deteriorated since it shut down 61 years ago after a dance celebrating St. Patrick's Day 1951, where boys and girls with green-tinted hair danced the Foxtrot and Butterfly to a live band on the stage.
That was the last time feet danced on these floors. The venue has sat dormant for six-plus decades, falling deeper into shambles with each passing year.
The paint is peeled and much of the wood appears half-rotted from rain that leaked through the roof. What was once probably lavish wallpaper has slid down the walls or fallen off and now hangs like drying laundry over the pipes running above where the bathrooms used to be.
The Bargain Nook uses the space as a storage area. Dozens of stacked boxes take up the center of the room, filled with next season's prom dresses and Christmas dresses and winter sweaters.
Plans are under way for change, however.
Almost two decades in the making, a group of Darlingtonites is within weeks of a major step toward the restoration of the Driver Opera House to its former self.
The group of volunteers is securing nonprofit status and negotiating the purchase of the building, with the intent to open the space in about 2015 as a community venue, The Driver Opera House Center for the Arts.
Driver Opera House Restoration, Inc., meets on the fourth Wednesday of every month and is seeking more volunteers to help push this complex, years-long restoration process forward. The next meeting is at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Wherever an interested person's talents lie - finance, graphic design, public relations, management, architecture, computer programming, theater - "we can find a place for you," said board member Leona Havens. (For more information, visit driveroperahouse.com or call Havens at 776-4709.)
A kick-off celebration for the restoration project is planned for Saturday, Aug. 11, with tours of the space in the morning and a party at the Darlington Festival Grounds Park in the afternoon.
In 1993, hairdresser Laura Jenkins decided the Driver Opera House needed saving, and six years later she and her husband, Gary, bought the building. Jenkins is working with the restoration group on the pending sale to the restoration group.
She got the idea to save the Driver from her customers. "They're in their 80s and 90s now," she said.
They remember the opera house in its prime, when almost every aspect of Darlington life played out here: kids graduated from high school, couples met, danced and married, Boy Scouts held meetings, community theater groups staged plays, professors from the University of Wisconsin gave lectures and, during Prohibition, men stashed empty fifths of whiskey behind the wall.
When her customers talk about being at the Driver Opera House, "for two to three minutes, you'd see their eyes sparkle."
She credits them with spurring her resolve to restore the Driver.
"Literally 19 years I've worked for this to happen, but so have a lot of people. We've got so many good people in Darlington working on it," Jenkins said.
Darlington needs a performance space that serves the community, agreed Havens and fellow board member Candi Fitzsimons.
The city is very "performance-oriented," Havens said, and the high school auditorium can't meet the demand.
"It's in use nonstop," Fitzsimons said.
The restoration group is working to match a $543,000 grant from the Department of Natural Resources so it can buy the property and flood-proof the building. An estimated $1.65 million more is needed to finish the restoration, with construction to begin tentatively in 2014. The first floor of the building will remain retail space.
Most important at this stage in the process is "standing behind it," said Bev Anderson, Darlington's former mayor. "Recognize the value and pass it on to other people."
Anderson, 78, remembers going to dances when the Driver was an American Legion Hall in the late 1940s. The Driver back then was geared toward people of all ages and thrived because of this, she said.
The current economic climate makes her nervous but she's hopeful: "We've done a lot of things through the years that people didn't think were possible."
More than a venue is at stake.
"We're not just trying to save an old building," Jenkins said. "We're trying to save a piece of history and preserve history for future generations."
The charms of this flat-floor opera house, built in 1883, have deteriorated since it shut down 61 years ago after a dance celebrating St. Patrick's Day 1951, where boys and girls with green-tinted hair danced the Foxtrot and Butterfly to a live band on the stage.
That was the last time feet danced on these floors. The venue has sat dormant for six-plus decades, falling deeper into shambles with each passing year.
The paint is peeled and much of the wood appears half-rotted from rain that leaked through the roof. What was once probably lavish wallpaper has slid down the walls or fallen off and now hangs like drying laundry over the pipes running above where the bathrooms used to be.
The Bargain Nook uses the space as a storage area. Dozens of stacked boxes take up the center of the room, filled with next season's prom dresses and Christmas dresses and winter sweaters.
Plans are under way for change, however.
Almost two decades in the making, a group of Darlingtonites is within weeks of a major step toward the restoration of the Driver Opera House to its former self.
The group of volunteers is securing nonprofit status and negotiating the purchase of the building, with the intent to open the space in about 2015 as a community venue, The Driver Opera House Center for the Arts.
Driver Opera House Restoration, Inc., meets on the fourth Wednesday of every month and is seeking more volunteers to help push this complex, years-long restoration process forward. The next meeting is at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Wherever an interested person's talents lie - finance, graphic design, public relations, management, architecture, computer programming, theater - "we can find a place for you," said board member Leona Havens. (For more information, visit driveroperahouse.com or call Havens at 776-4709.)
A kick-off celebration for the restoration project is planned for Saturday, Aug. 11, with tours of the space in the morning and a party at the Darlington Festival Grounds Park in the afternoon.
In 1993, hairdresser Laura Jenkins decided the Driver Opera House needed saving, and six years later she and her husband, Gary, bought the building. Jenkins is working with the restoration group on the pending sale to the restoration group.
She got the idea to save the Driver from her customers. "They're in their 80s and 90s now," she said.
They remember the opera house in its prime, when almost every aspect of Darlington life played out here: kids graduated from high school, couples met, danced and married, Boy Scouts held meetings, community theater groups staged plays, professors from the University of Wisconsin gave lectures and, during Prohibition, men stashed empty fifths of whiskey behind the wall.
When her customers talk about being at the Driver Opera House, "for two to three minutes, you'd see their eyes sparkle."
She credits them with spurring her resolve to restore the Driver.
"Literally 19 years I've worked for this to happen, but so have a lot of people. We've got so many good people in Darlington working on it," Jenkins said.
Darlington needs a performance space that serves the community, agreed Havens and fellow board member Candi Fitzsimons.
The city is very "performance-oriented," Havens said, and the high school auditorium can't meet the demand.
"It's in use nonstop," Fitzsimons said.
The restoration group is working to match a $543,000 grant from the Department of Natural Resources so it can buy the property and flood-proof the building. An estimated $1.65 million more is needed to finish the restoration, with construction to begin tentatively in 2014. The first floor of the building will remain retail space.
Most important at this stage in the process is "standing behind it," said Bev Anderson, Darlington's former mayor. "Recognize the value and pass it on to other people."
Anderson, 78, remembers going to dances when the Driver was an American Legion Hall in the late 1940s. The Driver back then was geared toward people of all ages and thrived because of this, she said.
The current economic climate makes her nervous but she's hopeful: "We've done a lot of things through the years that people didn't think were possible."
More than a venue is at stake.
"We're not just trying to save an old building," Jenkins said. "We're trying to save a piece of history and preserve history for future generations."