ohRa 1991

Music Hall

The Music Hall drawings and a linocut were each drawn on site, 1991. The Music Hall (also known as the Emerald Palace Theater, in Seattle), was a beautiful theater building; it opened to the public on April 19, 1929. It was torn down on orders of the family which owned it to make way for a businessman's hotel on the site.

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Initially I did four comparably sized drawings, and a linocut. The last drawing I did was the horizontal one, now in a private family collection, Seattle.

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The only time I was inside was before the demolition began, while they were having a fixtures sale. I ended up with a large cement urn, which was probably used as an ash tray in the theater; it brought to mind the magnificent exterior urn-like shapes on the top front of the exterior.
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I penned an op-ed on this needless architectural loss, of the building I considered to be Seattle's greatest architecture, the loss to the city and to economic tourism, published in the then hardcopy Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle PI), November 9, 1991. See the BIB (Bibliography) section in About the Artist to read the text of my op-ed: City's Loss of Historic Buildings a Disgrace.

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In the February 1993 issue of the (then hard copy) Pike Market News, Pike Market news writer Patt Cranage wrote an article about these drawings, titled "Music Hall Lives On In Hearts (and on tables, walls, etc)

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Music Hall drawings 1 through 4:
Music Hall no. 1
Media: Ink.
Paper size (currently unframed): 24 3/8 inches H x 22 W.
Drawn on 7th Avenue opposite the west side of the theater; the stained glass window furthest north, west side of the building, July 1991.
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Music Hall no. 2
Media: Ink, wash.
22 inches H x 24 3/8 W.
Drawn from 7th Avenue opposite Bell Plaza's entrance looking north towards the corner of 7th Ave and Olive, late July to early August 1991.
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Music Hall no. 3
Media: Ink.
Paper size (currently unframed): 20 1/8 inches H x 22 1/8 W

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Music Hall no. 4
Media: Ink, gouache
Paper size (currently unframed): 20 5/8 inches H x 18 1/4 W.
My notes state Begun on-site, early September 1991. Completed on site, Friday and Saturday
(I don't recall the month, perhaps January) 1992.

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