These pictures raise the curtain on a long-closed vaudeville theater.
Artist and activist photographer Seph Lawless shot Cleveland’s abandoned Variety Theatre earlier this month to help raise funds for a preservationist group that’s bringing the one-time Warner Brothers playhouse back to life, Lawless told the Daily News.
The Friends of the Historic Variety Theatre, an organization that owns the sprawling 1927 building at W. 118th St. and Lorain Ave. and is developing it in partnership with the Westown Community Development Corporation, brought in the locally based photog known for his images of economic decline.
The theater also served as a movie house and live music venue before the city closed it in 1986, the pseudonymous Lawless said.
“Here you have very authentic American ruins,” he said. “It’s a really beautiful thing, and it’s very rare to capture that.”
But it won’t be ruins much longer. The partners have plans to spruce up the theater section of the building and rent out the structure’s eight retail storefronts and 13 second-story apartments, local magazine Fresh Water reported. The Friends bought the National Register of Historic Places property for $1.1 million in 2009 and the nonprofit developer anticipates spending $12 million on renovations, according to the publication.
The revamped theater will form the centerpiece of Cleveland’s Lorain Avenue Master Plan for redevelopment along the once-thriving strip, according to the community development corporation’s website.
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Lawless, who has already published an e-book with his newest collection of photos, once attended music shows at the venue, which hosted the likes of REM and Metallica, he says. But he missed a famous 1984 Motörhead concert where the heavy metal band’s songs rang out so loudly that they created cracks in the ceiling and sent plaster raining down on the audience, he noted.
The new construction at the building should restore the theater as a great place to see live music, Lawless said.
“You had great concerts going on that I witnessed,” he said. “Seeing a musical act in a theater is something that a younger demographic can’t understand. That’s why it would be great to have it back the way it belongs in the Rock ‘n Roll capital of the world.”
The artist produced over 70 images showing the theater’s current crumbling state after the organization allowed him full access to the building. Legend has it that the building is haunted by the ghost of an actor who fell to his death from the rafters decades ago, Lawless said.
But he says he’s skeptical of such tales and he hopes his photos allow the public to see some vanishing views ahead of the property’s renovation.
“A lot of people don’t get the chance to go inside, but I went inside and shot it,” he said. “It was a real honor to be able to do so.”
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