Part 636: John Bairstow and the Chicago Auditorium
I have repeatedly mentioned the Chicago Auditorium in the past few posts. Here is a lengthy article about the theater that may help clarify its international significance. Tomorrow I will focus on the Chicago Auditorium’s stage carpenter, John H. Bairstow.
On 7 December 1899, the “Chicago Tribune” published the article “The Auditorium Stage. A Revolution in Scenic Apparatus and General Equipment” (page 12). It is packed of absolutely wonderful details about the stage machinery and scenery. This is the theater that every single college student should encounter in theater history class. Unfortunately, this space was never discussed in any of my theater history throughout my BA, MA and PhD studies. Here is the 1899 article in its entirety:
THE AUDITORIUM STAGE.
A Revolution in Scenic Apparatus and General Equipment.
Twenty Hydraulic Rams by Which the Floor Can Be Raised of Lowered-Innovations Art All Old Idea-As Absolutely Fire-Proof as Anything Can Be Made-The Electrician’s Room a Study-Eleven Miles of Steel Wire Cloth-An Iron Curtain That Weighs 9,000 Pounds.
There are twenty hydraulic rams by which the entire floor of the Auditorium can be raised or lowered at will. There are fifteen traps, large and small, some extending over the entire width of the stage, which can be raised to represent elevations of be dropped to allow spirits to disappear. A goblin or fiend may shoot up as quick as lightning, or a ghost rise slowly into view. No need any longer to depend on the effects of an imperfect perspective and the occasional rock to represent the valley in which old Rip Van Winkle appears. A real valley can be produced on the stage by some ne on the stage floor touching a few brass handles and knobs, when the traps will rise or drop and give the desired elevations and depression. No need of any makeshifts to produce the impression of a ship at sea. H.M.S. Pinafore can appear rocked by waves, life size almost, and make the huge hydraulic rams oscillate to produce this motion it will take only the moving of some more brass handles on the stage floor.
What produces the remarkable stage effect in the background? It is no longer a level canvas on which perspective compels the painter to have a view toward the horizon narrowed. On the contrary, true to nature, the view expands as you look farther towards the horizon. The horizon consists of a semi-circular piece covering the background and running forward on the sides halfway to the curtain. The effect produced is as in a panorama. The painted part gradually approaches, and merges into, the adjacent parts of the real ground and objects. This horizon works a wonderful change in the appearance of the stage. It is movable. It runs on a track and is rolled around a perpendicular cylinder at the other end. It contains four kinds of weather so that be setting the rollers in motion a perfect effect of a change from fair weather to a dark, threatening sky, and finally the heavy clouds of a storm, can be produced. Transparent clouds will permit the effects of light, be it sun, or moon, or lightning, to be made from behind this horizon. The horizon looks pretty and airy, but weighs 5,800 pounds, including the counterweights.
AS COMPARED WITH OTHER STAGES
The trap arrangements, the movability of the entire stage, and the horizon are probably the most remarkable improvements that distinguish the Auditorium from all other stages, not only in this country but in Europe. It is to be the most completely equipped stage in the world, and will be in every respect, except size, the most perfect. There are only three other stages containing all the improvement that the Auditorium will have – namely: at Budapest, Prague, and the old German University Halle. Most of these innovations are the patents of the Asphaleia company of Vienna, or the firm of Kautsky & Sons, one of whom, Fritz Kautsky, has been here for a month superintending the construction. This system was selected by Architect Adler and Mr. John Bairstow after a careful examination of the systems of the principal European stages, and it is safe to say that the introduction of it by the Auditorium will cause a revolution in the scenic apparatus and general equipment of American theaters.
If there ever will be an absolutely fire-proof stage this one is probably the ideal. Everything is of iron and steel. There are no wings, the horizon makes them superfluous. There are no grooved running crosswise, suspended from the flies; the horizon dispenses with them. Side pieces of which there are an immense number, thirty-five to forty feet high are let down on stout wire ropes and pulled up again with ease. Everything, including the large cylinders and pistons for lifting the stage is moved by hydraulic power, the water being stored in huge tanks above the fifteenth story. The properties are stored away from the busy stage in large, convenient storerooms, There is no other than electric light. Rows of 990 colored globes run along the flies across the stage, forming the border lights, and by a touch of a little handle the most startling effects of light can be produced. The clumsy old calcium light process is at last completely wiped out. The electrician’s room is a study in itself. As it will require a most expert engineer and one of the highest ability to mange the apparently inextricable network of pipes, rods, rams, cylinders, pistons, and cables, so the electrician must be of the highest order obtainable in order to find his way through the wilderness of handles, knobs, and buttons in the little room on the stage floor behind the reducing curtain. He has to control 5,000 lights on the stage and in the house. In the like manner the engineer has to control eleven miles of steel wire cable and any number of rams, beside the iron curtain which weighs 9,000 pounds. But everything is so perfectly balanced by counterweights, and the hydraulic motors so admirably arranged, that a mere touch of the hand is sufficient to set in motion many thousands of pounds.
NO FLIES ON THIS STAGE
During the performance nobody will have to be in the flies. In fact there are no flies on the Auditorium stage. The side pieces – Mr. Kautsky calls them “walls” to avoid the term “wings” – are held up by steel ropes and propped up from behind. Almost 100 feet above the stage floor these “walls” are suspended ready for use. The artistic finish of all these pieces makes them worth looking at on their own account. Ordinary stage decorations are coarse when looked at closely, but in this case each piece is a picture in itself, so perfect that one might hang it in a parlor alongside a good oil painting.
About eight feet below the stage floor is another floor, which is in every particular an exact duplicate of the one above, each trap is raised on the stage floor to be used as an elevation of some sort, its place can be filled by the trap from the lower floor, s as to close up the stage floor. Beneath this lower floor is the basement, containing the hydraulic machinery, with a total pressure of six atmospheres. All scenery is operated from the stage floor.
Along the sides strong iron stairways lead to the top. An iron bridge extends across the proscenium just above the curtain, and along the background is the painter’s frame with two platforms, all suspended in steel wire cables. Near the top in the property room there is a force of artists at work now preparing the properties. Fawcett Robinson and his brother who used to be Henry Irving’s property artist are constructing the articles of papier-maché in such close resemblance of the genuine articles that at a distance of five feet one would take the tables and bookcases to be made of antique oak, and his copy of Thorwoldsen’s Venus looks at a distance of about ten feet like a perfect plaster cast. Mr. Robinson is an enthusiast in his work and his room alone is worth more than one visit to the Auditorium stage.
Not only is the apparatus for producing artistic effect so complete and varied that it will create an almost perfect illusion, but the convenience of the actors. Musicians, and workmen has been consulted to a hitherto unheard-of degree. The Diva need no longer receive callers on the stage.
MILWARD ADAMS’ NEAT IDEA.
A beautiful little reception-room has been provided-Milward Adams’ idea. The dressing rooms are comparatively large and commodious and provided with all conveniences. They are thirty in number, comparable of accommodating 300 people without crowding. The largest and best are on the stage floor, the others open off the landings along the iron stairways at the sides. The room where the musicians can be during the intervals of their work is as large as the orchestra pit, the prompter’s box commodious without being offensively conspicuous. A large covered court adjoins the rear of the stage for the reception of the actors and actresses in carriages or on foot. The stage manager has a convenient little room adjoining that of the electrician.
A magnificent plush curtain is covered by an iron curtain with a coat of plaster. The side borders are simply but tastefully decorated and display in letters of gold the names of a number of leading composers, classical and modern. The list comprises the names of Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Haydn, Schumann, Rossini, Mozart, Verdi, Gounod, and Glück.
FIGURES OF THE SCENIC APPARATUS
A few figures may assist in forming an estimate of the larger proportions and perfect construction of these scenic apparatus. The iron curtain weighs 9,000 pounds, exclusive of counter-weights; the reducing curtain, covered with plaster, weighs 23,000 pounds. The horizon is forty-eight feet high by 300 long. The contract for the iron work on the stage footed up $110,000, and the total equipment of the stage exceeds $200,000.”
[$200,000 in 1889 is equivalent in purchasing power to $7,388,771.25 in 2019. The cost of the entire building was $3,200,00.00]
The article concluded, “In the hall is to be used for other than theater purposes a level floor can easily be placed on the stage level, and the ceiling has a piece fastened by iron chains to windlasses which are hidden from view so that it can be lowered and shut the gallery out of sight.”
From the opening of the auditorium until after his partial retirement in 1905, John Bairstow would be in charge of raising the auditorium floor for special events. In 1910, the “Chicago Tribune” reported, “ John Bairstow is getting in trim for the one effort which claims his attention from year to year. Who is John Bairstow? Well, John Bairstow is the first stage carpenter, and from the beginning of the charity ball as an Auditorium function John Bairstow has laid the great dancing floor for the event. He has been doing this for twenty years and in the mind of John Bairstow no other carpenter, not even his own son William Bairstow, who has succeeded him as stage carpenter, may be entrusted with the duty. He retired from active work five years ago and this year he is far from the best of health, but already he is getting the numbered sections of the ballroom floor carefully arranged, mentally – as it will appear the night of Jan. 31 – for after every ball the floor – built originally at a cost of $10,000 – is taken up, its sections numbered carefully and stored away. This year thirty-seven boxes will be erected to add to the forty-five permanent stalls. The new boxes will be arranged four on either side beneath the organ grills, eight on each side of the stage proper, five around the rear wall of the stage, and eight at the west end of the ballroom. To get the theater in readiness a force of seventy-five carpenters and assistants will work two days and nights to complete the work” (22 Dec 1910, page 8).
I will continue with the life of stage carpenter John Bairstow tomorrow.
To be continued…
