A Road Trip to Fort Scottish, Kansas
By mid-August of 2015, I climb into the CEO’s company vehicle and we leave for Kansas and Oklahoma. Our travel companions include the General Director of MMHC and a local Scottish Rite mason for this three-day trip. We arrive in Fort Scott that evening and examine the down town area surrounding the abandoned Scottish Rite Temple. Businesses have closed and many buildings are boarded up. The most interesting aspect of the town’s layout is the National Park that terminates the end of main street. This would be the “fort” of Fort Scott. Flowers hanging along brick sidewalks suggest that some residents are desperately trying to keep this town alive.
The Scottish Rite has been vacant for over a year and the windows on the west side of the building are open. I start to fear that the state of the scenery may be compromised if birds or bats have entered the space, let alone other insects or animals. I know that most of the artifacts were auctioned off well over a year ago and are now sitting in private homes across the country. The scenery is the last thing in the building that could remind visitors of Fort Scott’s booming past, when once it competed with Kansas City in size and industry. I have a small sense of dread as I contemplate our removal of the scenery, realizing that we may be the ones to remove the final “spark” from this community. For me, removing scenery from line sets and putting it into storage is similar to when the soul leaves a body and only an empty shell remains. The first time that I encountered this feeling was the previous year when Paul Sannerud and I put the entire Winona Masonic scenery collection into storage.
The next morning, we leave the hotel to meet our local Scottish Rite host; a local jeweler and one time Personal Representative to the Scottish Rite Valley. He opens the building and explains that there are no working toilets, only the electricity has been left. This means that removing the drops would be a nightmare. I recall the grime coating the Winona drops and how our brief lavatory breaks to wash up were crucial.
I carry my camera up the winding staircase to the second floor theatre. Even as an abandoned building, it is still stunning and holds a beauty that you seldom encounter in most contemporary spaces. Our host turns on the stage lights and lowers the first scene – it is stunning. Over the next few hours, I work tirelessly to photographically document as many important aspects of the scenery and space for reference in evaluation.
There is no water damage and I am absolutely shocked. I would later understand that the reason for this was the placement of the fire doors above the stage. I have noticed that many fire doors are placed directly above the central stage area. In case of a fire, the fire curtain drops and the doors open, thus preventing the fire from spreading to the auditorium. In Fort Scott, the fire doors were positioned over the stage left area so any leaking onto the stage are did not harm the painted scenes – brilliant.
Excitement grows as I realize that Fort Scott is one of a handful of collections that remain untouched by water and is almost in pristine condition. Only a very heavy layer of contamination is detectable on the front and back of each drop. This contamination includes soot from heating systems, bat guano, flash powder, Masonry dust, and many other unknown contaminants – all common for historical scenery. I start to suspect that this is probably one of the most important Scottish Rite collections in the United States, produced by one artist, and it is in remarkable shape. It is also an adaptable size for the MMHC too! The excitement in me rises as I complete the evaluation that morning.
For me, scenery evaluations are time-consuming endeavors, typically taking one or two weeks to complete from start to finish. I photograph the front and back with detail images of not only damage, but also written information on the backs of each scene that might note if stagehands have shifted it other line sets over time. I start every project with extensive research concerning that particular Scottish Rite and the origin of the Valley; maybe even delving into the arrival of Freemasonry in that State.
It typically takes me between ten to thirty minutes to record the information and condition of each drop. Then I pair up the scenes to create appropriate settings for the degree productions, many that the members are unfamiliar with and have not been lowered for decades. After an onsite evaluation taking two to three days, I spend another week to examine the information and complete my write evaluation.
For Fort Scott, I was allotted the time between breakfast at the hotel and lunch to complete an onsite examination and documentation. The downloading of images, pairing of drops, and everything else would happen on the road. Unlike other evaluations, this one needed to determine whether the scenery would work for the Valleys of Minneapolis and St. Paul once they moved into the MMHC facility. Furthermore, I needed to include a complete estimation for any anticipated expenses associated with the removal, transportation, storage, and restoration of the collection after an initial purchase. This would all be done during the remaining sixteen-hour drive and working in my hotel room at night.
To be continued…
