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firm active: 1907-1921 minneapolis, minnesota :: chicago, illinois |
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Open Air Theater for Thaddeus P. Giddings
Purcell and Elmslie
Anoka, Minnesota 1915
Parabiographies entry, Volume for 1910
Text by William Gray Purcell
for 1914 [Commission List 246]
Job Date (in Parabiography): May 16, 1914
OPEN AIR THEATRE, Anoka (Giddings)
[This is the revised version; other sentences by WGP at beginning]
Here protection from wind storms had to be positive and speedy. No one [has] ever seen any detailed engineering studies of how those canvasses were hung from the masts provided for that purpose around the coping of [the ancient Coliseum] the old Roman building. However, we set up a similar line of masts around the curve of the back of our theatre. From these we stretched wires in pairs that sloped toward the stage. We hung 36-inch widths of canvas on galvanized rings and pulled these down the slope and back up with cords at the rear. These canvas widths were lapped over one another about three inches, at the high point at the back, the first width over, the next under, as the system converged over the concentric seats the overlap increased to about 18 inches, so that the canvas roof was practically double over the stage.
[Annotations by WGP on draft: Morkish copied it (MH: A photographer at the Huntington Library in San Marino that helped Purcell in the 1950s). This has been written again for another purpose. Found the only picture in existence. (MH: See the image on the main page for this commission)]
The theatre was in a forested glen so that the problem of protection against sun was not in the picture. Our canvas roof was satisfactory in light showers providing there was little wind. The stream of water accumulating in the trough of the widths of canvas was shot on over the stage and into the river.
As long as Mr. Giddings gave attention to the programs and generally fathered civic interest in this theatre project, it was a constructive force in the community, and excellent amateur and semi-professional productions were held here over a number of years. But as soon as Giddings' time in the summer was more valuable elsewhere, particularly in his National Music Camp in Michigan, the Anoka summer theatre fell largely into disuse or for some casual gatherings of no special significance.
Collection: William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota [AR:B4d1.8]
