Happy New Year to each and all!
In 2015 this blog will continue to tell our stories. The most exciting thing
about the storytelling here with the naming of people and places is that we make them
live once again. Our hearts and minds can know that there is a place to put them,
to share them, to keep them safe and even to add to them.
There are some lined up already but I welcome more and more....
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Here is another architectural story that we have just
bid farewell .
This post is dedicated to those incredible historic architectural
structures lost to the Taunton landscape as well as those of so many other towns and cities.
Progress? Parking lots? Short term vision?
So many reasons. Do you know that the magnificent mansions
in Newport almost met that fate as well? Only the Newport
Preservation Society saved them....and finances, of course.
with permission of Frank C. Grace, photographer.
Trig Photography
After years of sparring and neglect the Star Theatre has finally fallen to the wrecking ball. In spite of those wishing otherwise, it joins other magnificent edifices who have not found new life. This one is now gone forever, its history buried beneath the ignominious rubble now swept away.
History is a whiff of eternity, delicate and quickly gone.
Just next to Taunton Lace Store we see the edifice of the Leanard building still bearing an old ad.
Below we see the front of the theatre building.
The final demolition started on Monday, Dec. 15th.
In a photograph offered by David Pimental Jr. of Taunton,
we see the top two stories that housed the Theatre going first.
we see the top two stories that housed the Theatre going first.
The Star Theatre's descendants: the Park, The Strand, the State, elegant in their architecture and wrapped in our memories met that wrecking ball years ago. Any of these edifices could have meant a greater renewal for the downtown area. The other day, for no reason, up into the front of my memory came a moment, as fresh as it was then when I was a child. I was coming out of the seating area into the lobby, Underfoot was lovely deep red carpet. I remember feeling the elegance, the quiet. The magic as I looked up the carpeted red stairs that led majestically up to the balcony(I was too young to know yet what that magic meant to teenagers!).
True, you and I never saw a performance at the Star. As part of the Taunton Art Association I once exhibited my paintings there as we tried to raise awareness of the historical theatre. What a task for our imaginations. Our grandparents must have enjoyed performances here, live and on film. Already the structure was delicate and we were not allowed to wander around. Maybe there were echoes of long ago...but I never researched it until now.
Pinterest:
The Star Theatre opened in 1911and is listed as having 450 seats. The Leonard Block building had been built in the late 1870. This photo is taken from a diaganel angle. The building with the sign Goldstein houses the Star Theatre.
The Star did not survive the talkies, it closed in 1929. BUT, it probably aired the first full length film ever to be shown in the U.S., Dante's Inferno in 1911. Prior to this movie producers did not think people would sit for an hour through a full feature film. Many films were shown as serials over a month or two.
The Star was listed as having "shows" daily. Take a look at the film "Dante's Inferno "restored in 2004 and feel like your grandparents may have felt. My grandparents were already in this country when this film appeared. Maybe? Keep in mind, full length then was not full length now.
There would have been concerts and vaudeville acts up there on the second and third floors of the building. Once closed, the Star lingered like a dying ballerina, alone surrounded by memories of her glory days. Hushed as she listened to echos of laughter, maybe even tears and surely of the tinkling piano that accompanied those silent pictures.
Goodbye, Lady Star. I do not wish to know what will be built in your place. You
offered entertainment and escape for Tauntonians in your own era.
For that we owe you at least our gratitude.
Post Sources
Frank C. Grace Photography Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trig- Photography/349794277317
a great article of early movie history.
For my past blog posts about the Star Theatre's offspring see the links below.http://schoolstvillage.blogspot.com/2012/11/movie-theatre-pearls.html
http://schoolstvillage.blogspot.com/2012/11/lets-all-go-to-movies.html
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Thank you for a fond farewell to a dear old friend The Star Theatre! RIP
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