|
|
 
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Saenger Theatre Damage Status
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 10-17-2005 03:31 AM
That's a weird picture of the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans. The grand drape is emerald green, so I suppose some heavy-handed photo manipulation occurred by someone who thought he was just getting out the amber from the interior lighting by incandescents.
The water from the flooding went over the stages at all the Canal Street historic houses: The Saenger, the Joy, The State Palace (Loew's), & the Orpheum. The flooding was only about 3' or 4' above sidewalk level, but the theaters' auditoriaeums have excavated floors. The Saenger's seats were out as part of the summer renovation project, but there's damage to the building up to the waterline about a foot over the stage - not just the auditorium walls, stage, etc., but under the stage, the bottom of the organ console (which was up on its lift), the pit lift, all the mechanical in the basement, etc. All the mechanical & electrical in the basement are big problems in all the theaters. This was a point at which those theatres which had modernized their electrical service entrance to new breaker panels came out much worse than having left the old knife-switch & cartridge fuse original installations, since the breaker panels were all submerged & a loss as opposed to just cleanup of contacts & replacement of fuses. Wires in conduit have their own particular problems. Also, at the Saenger, the roof was pretty much off except for tarpaper as there was a new roof being put on & the ceiling from the auditorium was being re-done as part of the summer renovations, & the rain from above has done what it do.
The Saenger has cancelled the rest of *this* season, & is letting contracts for repairs. A theater's theatrical season has a name which spans two years because of the tradition of shutting down for the summer (because of the heat before AC), thus the season starts in the fall & ends in the spring. It's a tradition that sort of works like a fiscal year; during the summer months things are sort of less structured & things like summer film series & odd little rentals, as well as different kinds of work on the physical plant, are done since it's out of the season.
(Boring sidebar: the theatrical season solidified as fall-to-spring coinciding with east coast & southern theatrical seasons; in the 1800's, the theatrical season in the midwest like Chicago, St. Louis, etc. was spring-to-fall, because it was too cold to go to the theatre in the winter. Theatrical companies would run the season in the south or northeast until it got too hot, then send their companies to run the season in what's now the midwest until it got too cold, then back they all go down south, usually after the first frost, when the annual threat of yellow fever was presumed to be over, or to the northeast.)
The post on the THS list made shortly after the storm contained some erroneous information.
To get an idea of the unholy mess caused by a building flooding & floating crap everywhere, take a look at John DeMajo's house & observe the migration the Wurlitzer he had installed in his home. That's pretty much what the basements of all these buildings looked like after the flood water was pumped out of the basements.
http://www.demajo.net/organ/katrina/index.htm
[ 10-17-2005, 04:47 AM: Message edited by: William Hooper ]
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic