Part 670: A Melting Pot of Ingenuity
There are four things to consider when examining the development of Brown’s Special System – the Chicago Auditorium, the Beckwith Memorial Auditorium, the scenic studio of Albert, Grover & Burridge, and Sosman & Landis. There is no linear progression of events and Chicago is a melting pot of ingenuity.
I’ll start with what Rick Boychuk wrote in “Nobody Looks Up: The History of the Counterweight Rigging System,1500-1925.” Boychuk contends that Chicago Auditorium of 1889 is a game changer in the future of American counterweight rigging. Of the endeavor, he writes, “The first counterweight rigging system in American was state-of-the-art technology when it was installed in 1889 in the Auditorium Building in Chicago – commonly referred to as the Chicago Auditorium” (page 167). Boychuk explains how Ferdinand Peck, the visionary for the Chicago auditorium, traveled to Europe to examine opera houses, later joined by architect Dankmar Adler (Adler & Sullivan) and Chicago stage carpenter John Bairstow. Boychuk states, “Chicago borrowed the sheave design and configuration from Budapest and the balance of the counterweight system from Vienna” (page 172). Read his book.
Things to think about as we contemplate the evolution of Brown’s special system: the Chicago Auditorium stage carpenter, Bairstow, was one of the charter members who founded Chicago’s Theatrical Mechanics Association. In fact, he was the organization’s first president in Chicago. Bairstow was a member of TMA Chicago Lodge No. 4. David Austin Strong was also a Member of Chicago Lodge. No. 4. At the time they were both members in 1891, Strong was an employee of Sosman & Landis, and was also credited as being the “Daddy of Masonic Design.”
This title was given to him by Thomas Gibbs Moses in his 1931 memoirs; Moses became the president of Sosman & Landis in 1915. Before Chicago, Strong enjoyed a successful career in New York as both a scenic artist and stage carpenter. Strong even provided one of the scenes for the 1866 production of “The Black Crook” at Niblo’s Garden Theatre. At this same time, the Theatrical Mechanics Association was founded in New York (1866). During the 1870s Strong relocated to Chicago, the hub of theatrical construction and activities after the great fire of 1871. Joseph S. Sosman moved to Chicago in 1874, with the Sosman & Landis studio being established by 1877. Sosman & Landis was the primary manufacturer and installer of Brown’s special system in Scottish Rite theaters across the country.
At Sosman & Landis, Strong, Moses, and another stage carpenter by the name of Charles S. King were part of a special group; this group could be considered scenic artists with a thorough understanding of stage machinery, or stage carpenters who paint extremely well. Each had a specific task that he gravitated toward, but their job title by no means limited their abilities and contributions to one task or a single skill. Others in this group included Walter Burridge and Ernest Albert. Albert and Burridge were two of three founders who established another Chicago scenic studio in 1891 – Albert, Grover, and Burridge. One of their largest projects would be the manufacture and delivery of scenery and stage machinery for the Beckwith Memorial Theatre in Dowagiac, Michigan. This theater is significant within the framework of American theatre history.
Here is a refresher of the Albert, Grover & Burridge before revisiting the Beckwith Memorial Theatre and its link to the Chicago Auditorium. Ernest Albert (1857-1946), Oliver Dennett Grover (1861-1927) and Walter Burridge (1857-1913) founded “Albert, Grover & Burridge.” Their studio was located at 3127-33 State Street, Chicago, covering an area of 100×125 feet. Two of the founders had a significant tie to stage carpenter Bairstow: Albert worked as a scenic artist for the Chicago Auditorium and Chicago Opera House, while Walter Burridge was the scenic artist for both the Grand Opera House and McVicker’s. Keep in mind that John Bairstow worked as a stage carpenter at McVickers, the Grand Opera and the Chicago Auditorium. Grover was an art instructor at the Chicago Art Institute and linked to the planning of the Columbian Exposition. Albert and Burridge both worked with Thomas G. Moses at Sosman & Landis during the 1880s. Each would have known the long-time Sosman & Landis stage carpenter, Charles S. King. King is also a possible contender for the conception and development of Brown’s special system.
The scenic studio of Albert, Grover & Burridge is described in “Chicago and its Resources Twenty Years After, 1871-1891: A Commercial History Showing the Progress and Growth of Two Decades from the Great Fire to the Present Time.” The studio was mentioned as implementing advancements in the methods of mounting and presentation of stage plays. Albert, Grover & Burridge leased the old Casino building on State Street, just south of 31st street, and renovated it. Their space included 12,000 square feet of working area, and another 2,500 square feet devoted to storage and sewing room. There were twenty paint frames, ranging from 56 by 35 feet to 30 by 20 feet. This was a sizable complex.
A unique feature implemented by Albert, Grover & Burridge was that it included a staging area for scenic effects and innovations. The abovementioned publication reports, “The studio is so large that it permits the artists to introduce a novel feature in the art of painting scenery, which has been in their thoughts for some years. That is after a scene is painted, it can be hung, set and lighted in an open space the full size of any stage in the country, so that a manager can not only inspect it as an entirety, and thus suggest alterations, but he can bring his company to the studio and rehearse with the new scenery.” This idea had already been partially implemented by the Hanlon brothers at their private theater and workspace in Cohasset, where their master mechanic William Knox Brown tested new stage machinery and effects. Albert, Grover & Burridge went beyond the manufacture of scenery – they were the visionaries who combined painted illusion, lighting innovations, and new stage machinery. They were no different from other scenic studios in Chicago, they just had the space to expand and add a staging area. Scenic studios, with their staff of stage carpenters and scenic artists remained at the forefront of technological advancements, integrating old techniques with new technology. Unfortunately for Albert, Grover & Burridge, their business venture went bankrupt in two years, so they were not around when E. A. Armstrong and Bestor G. Brown were looking for a scenic studio to subcontract for Scottish Rite work. Sosman & Landis were waiting in the wings. However, their contributions can not be discounted when looking at the circle of innovators who helped disseminate the new counterweight technology.
By 1901, a Minneapolis “Star Tribune” article notes new settings at the Bijou Theatre in the article “Experts Behind the Scenes” (January 13). This provides a little context into the shifting staging techniques for commercial theater productions: “The stage proper was divided by the old system of grooves, which were used to hold up the scenery into divisions, one, two, three and four, where the stage was extra deep, sometimes five and six. Grooves are a mechanical contrivance in which the scenes slide back and forth. This method of stage setting is very seldom employed at the present time, the more modern arrangements of setting scenes in a box shape, supporting them with braces and connecting them by lash lines, being more common use.” At the same time box sets became more standard leg drops and fly scenery replaced wings, shutters, and roll drops.
In 1899 the fly scenery at the Beckwith Memorial Theatre is examined in “W.A. Norton’s Directory of Dowagiac, Cassopolis and La Grange, Pokagon, Silver Creek and Wayne Townships” (1899). The publication reports, “The scenery is designed for the cyclorama effect which has been found so effective, and which was first used in the Auditorium in Chicago. By this arrangement a scene can be set as a street or garden by simply moving the scenes which are profiled on both sides and top, anywhere desired. Every set of scenery is a finished piece of art. It is, after the latest fashion, lashed together with ropes and is capable of being made into seventy-five distinct stage dressings” (page 159). Earlier newspapers described the thirty-six hanging drops that could be combined in various combinations for seventy-six set possibilities.
The Dowagiac “Republican” from January 18, 1893 described the new building as “The finest theater in America,” elaborating on the painted scenery: “It is the fitting and arrangement of the stage in the Beckwith Memorial Theatre, that the greatest care has been exercised to obtain the best possible results, and a great degree of success has been obtained. To go into technicalities and the use of stage terms would not be perhaps intelligible to our readers generally, so we will note only the main points. The stage is fifty by thirty-eight feet. Up to the gridiron, from which is suspended by an elaborate system of lines and pulleys all of the stage settings it is possible to use in the form of drop curtains, is fifty feet, allowing ample room for hoisting out of sight a whole screen in a few seconds, and allowing rapid changing of scenes so necessary to the continuing of the action of a play and effects are made possible that were unknown in the old days of sliding flats. To those acquainted with and interested in things theatrical and matters pertaining to proper stage fitting we think it is sufficient guarantee of the success of the stage to say that Albert, Grover & Burridge, of Chicago, had the direction of the stage fittings and the wall decorations of the auditorium and the entire building. Ernest Albert, of A., G., & B., under whose direction the art glass, colorings, the selection of draperies, and the furnishings of the theater were made, had succeeded admirably in producing the most beautiful and harmonious whole.”
The Beckwith Memorial Theatre of Dowagiac, Michigan, was built in 1892 for the cost of one hundred thousand dollars. Albert, Grover & Burridge directed the plan and installation of all stage fittings, the wall decorations of the auditorium, and painted décor throughout the entire building. This was a major extravagance for a small town that numbered less than seven thousand people. For more information pertaining to this theater, see past installment 134.
To be continued…
