As I'm sure most of you are aware, the Beacon Theater is a historic theater located in New York City (74th and Broadway to be exact) that has seen many, many top artists and performers grace its stage over the course of the 79 years it has been open (such as the annual spring Allman Brothers run). Over the past few months, the theater has undergone some major renovations, and is set to reopen on February 13th. As some of you may have seen me mention, my dad's company is putting in the carpet in the theater, and today, since I'm home from college for the weekend, I went in to work with him to check it out.
The theater is nearly done (it has to be done by Friday so Paul Simon can come in and rehearse for his shows), but at the last minute, James Dolan (Chairman of Cablevision, owns MSG, the Knicks, Rangers, etc.) decided that he wanted carpet between the rows, so today's task was to cut the carpet and bring it to the theater for installation. We got to my dad's warehouse in Mount Vernon NY at about 7, waited for the carpet to come in, which took an hour, and after about two hours of cutting and loading carpet, we headed over to the theater.
A new wood floor is being put in on the stage, so they put up a curtain to prevent sawdust from getting everywhere.
Work being done on stage. The floor will be painted black.
Because of the curtain, this is the best look out into the seats I could get from on stage.
This is looking out on stage from backstage, stage right.
This picture was taken backstage on the third floor. I was pretty surprised at the backstage area to be honest. Normally, in a major concert venue, you'd expect backstage to be spacious and luxurious, but this wasn't the case at the Beacon. Instead, this theater has eight floors that each contain three or four very small rooms and a bathroom. Granted, this area is obviously not finished, but the rooms are tiny, and not at all what I would have thought the artist's dressing rooms would have been like. Another interesting note, the Beacon Theater is not only a theater, but it is also a hotel, and there is an elevator connecting these backstage floors with the hotel floors. Any artist performing at the theater who happens to be staying in the hotel doesn't even have to leave the building, they can just take the elevator straight up to their room.
Here we see part of the hydraulic system underneath the stage, which can completely lower a good portion of the stage from the looks of it.
Looking out at the orchestra and loge from the backstage entrance.
This is the stage and the first few rows of the orchestra, along with scaffolding on the right side of the theater.
The main lobby, looking out towards the main entrance.
The lobby, looking in towards the theater, which would be on the left. Note: those rolls of carpet in the foreground are the ones we rolled up in the morning, which are going in the rows.
A look down at the stage from the back of the loge.
The left side of the loge.
The right side of the loge.
Right side of the theater, with scaffolding to allow workers to continue finishing touching up the gold on the statues (more on that in a minute).
How the hell they got this thing in the theater is beyond me. James Dolan also decided at the last minute that he wanted the statues and such that were a faded gold color to shine a little bit more, so the workers in this picture are applying gold leaf (a very thin foil of gold. Yes, it's actual gold) to the designs on the left side of the theater.
A closeup of the work being done.
More gold touch up on the right side of the theater.
My dad in the lobby of the balcony
View of the stage between the upper and lower balcony.
Here's some proof that I do actually exist...it's me standing in the last row of the balcony
The view from the last row of the balcony.
Left side of the balcony.
Right side of the balcony.
The newly restored ceiling. It wasn't completely repainted, but rather cleaned up and touched up where needed.
I took this picture to show the difference between the old gold coloring vs. the new gold leaf being put up throughout the theater.
View of the theater from the front row. All the seats in the theater are brand new.
So there you have it. That's what the Beacon Theater looks like, as of about 12 PM on January 31st, 2009...in all it's renovated, yet still unfinished glory!
Quite the surprise, isn't it? Like I've said before, there's even more visual proof that I'm a real person out on the web, you just have to do a little searching
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A look inside the Beacon Theater blog
