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Wednesdav. August 22. 1990 / University Daily Kansan
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Liberty Hall has rocky past
By Sabine Meyer
Special to the Kansan
It had rosette-tint walls, painted Grecian scenes, velvet carpet and parquet chairs in soft brown leather. Then it changed to art deco style. Later, its interior was covered with black and red paint.
Today, the main lobby still has its tile mosaic floor, its marble waintscans and balustrades and its twin staircases. The balcony lobby is illuminated by the facade's stained-glass fan window. The grand vaulted ceiling is decorated with cosmetic paintings.
This is Liberty Hall, Lawrence's historic home of entertainment and assembly.
Throughout the years, the building at the corner of Massachusetts and Seventh streets underwent several complete destructions and reconstructions. Yet the same freedom always inhabited the place.
The multiple lives of Liberty Hall make up a story of success and failure.
The most recent started in May 1985 when the two present owners, Charles Oldfather, professor emeritus at the KU School of Law, and David Millstein, owner of Sunflower Surplus, began work on the building to make it a performing arts center, movie theater and meeting place for the Lawrence community.
Because there were no photos of the original interior decorations, Millstein, who acted as the general contractor, designed the new deco-
"We did what we could, but it was impossible to make a cohesive statement of the original decoration" he said.
Since its grand opening in October 1986, Liberty Hall has hosted weddings, private parties, class reunions, conventions and all kinds of performing arts. The building also houses a video store specializing in classic and international films.
Millstein said the concept of the place had always been that of a central location for entertainment.
A painting by Lawrence artist Dennis Helm, "The Muse of Music" graces stage right in Liberty Hall
"We favor continuity along that line," he said. "What is important to us is to have that concept of focus in the minds of the open-minded point of view."
Liberty Hall was the only theater in town to show "The Last Temptation of Christ" two years ago. The movie caused a demonstration because of its controversial religious allegory.
The theater has shown a movie every night since December 1989, when the owners opened a new great movie theater in the building.
Tim Griffith, Liberty Hall manager, said. "We try to show films that won't be shown anywhere like art and international films."
He said that when there was just one theater, the live events broke the movie schedule.
"We missed movies, we were losing the rhythm and money," Millstein said.
As the city became the anti-slavery capital of Kansas, the building became the home of a free-state
Lawrence was settled in 1854. That same year, the very first building appeared on the Liberty Island, and it was for the firm of Allen and Gilmore.
Griffith said Lawrence was a small town with a small market.
"It's a tough world out there," he said. "We're just an independent. The big chains are tough to compete against."
When asked about future plans for Liberty Hall, Griffith said: "To stay open."
And that is surely a challenge. The history of Liberty Hall shows a series of ups and downs.
newspaper, the Herald of Freedom.
Emory Scott said in his book, "One Hundred Years of Lawrence Theaters," that famous persons like the fiery New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley spoke at Poole's hall.
When slavery advocates burned the place to the ground in 1856, it did not take long for the free-state spirit to rise from the ashes.
Records are incomplete for the decade following Aug. 21, 1863, when William Clarke Quantrill stormed Lawrence. Liberty Hall, if it was destroyed, must have been rebuilt or restored.
Samuel Edwin Poole built a two-story brick structure which housed the first public meeting hall in Lawrence.
In 1870, a Baptist minister suggested the name of Liberty Hall because, some years earlier, Abraham Lincoln supposedly called Lawrence the "cradle of liberty."
Then Liberty Hall entered the Bowersock era.
Lawrence tycoon Justin Dewitt Bowersock bowsed the building in 1882. Bowersock owned everything of significance in town, including the building, the company in the foundry, the power company and the Lawrence National Bank.
He transformed the building into an opera house. The Bowersock Opera House opened in September
1882 with the Fay Templeton Opera Company performing Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta "Pieces of Penzance."
Overnight, the opera house became Lawrence's hot spot for evening entertainment.
This brilliant career was stopped again in February 1911 when a fire left nothing of the opera house.
Scott wrote in his book,
"Lawrence was without a legitimate show house and sizeable theater for the first time since 1833."
Bowersock rebuilt the theater and in January 1912, "the finest theater for any town of the size of New York was ready to welcome the public
Steven Jansen, director of the Elizabeth Watkins Community Museum in Lawrence, said the museum has twice as large as Lawrence needed.
"The opera house was the main place in Lawrence where the theatrical life took place," he said.
It had an acoustically superior auditorium.
short quote an article published by the Lawrence Gazette in 1912: "The theater is absolutely fireproof. From the basement to the roof it is constructed of reinforced steel, and there is a place a fire could occur would be among the scenery on the stage and the audience would be per-
tectly safe in remaining in their seats and watching that conflagration at the owner's expense."
Scott also wrote that each program stated, "This Building Can Not Burn." This assertion was put to the test in 1930 when a fire ruined the interior decoration of the interior but left its structure intact.
But before this, the Bowersock, which had become a movie theater, gave Lawrence its first talking movie, the "Canary Murder Case," starring William Powell and Jean Arthur.
Between 1930 and 1957, the theater continued as a movie house under several different owners, but the theater returned to silence because of a shortage of parking places and the convenience of the Granada Theatre closer to campus.
The theater then stepped into modernity. In November 1964, when two Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers, Mike Murfim and John Brown became its owners, the band made it a showcase of good live-band music.
The Murfin and Brown duo transformed the place and redecorated it in black and red. The Dog Red dog wn born and soon grew up in concert concerts with Kce and Tina Turner, Fleetwood Mac and Ry Cooder. It
See HALL, p. 14
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