The Hanna Theatre is the last of five theaters in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square to be renovated and “reimagined” for modern audiences. |
Between February 1921 and November 1922 five theaters opened along a short stretch of Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, all of them presenting silent movies, legitimate theater, and vaudeville. During the Great Depression, several of the theaters in the unofficial “Playhouse Square” converted to movie theaters, but they all fell into a death spiral after World War II. By 1969, four of the five were forced to close.
Only the Hanna Theatre stayed alive, limping along into the '80s with local theater productions and the occasional Broadway preview, until it too went dark in 1989. Ten years later, an investment group led by Playhouse Square—a preservation organization that had already saved Hanna's cousins, the Allen, Ohio, State, and Palace theaters—acquired the historic Hanna Building with the goal of making the Hanna Theatre the permanent home of the Great Lakes Theater Festival.
For local A/E firm Westlake Reed Leskosky, the task of revitalizing the Hanna was compounded by the added assignment of making the space conducive to live concerts, stand-up comedy, corporate outings, and other events for which it was never intended.
WRL's new design significantly reconfigured the original 1,400-seat proscenium stage theater into an intimate 548-seat thrust stage, fully flexible in three independent sections, and adaptable to a 572-seat proscenium mode. Equipped with hydraulic lifts that can raise and lower parts of the stage at a rate of up to two feet per second as well as a new structurally independent fly system and improved acoustical, A/V, and lighting systems, the venue provides unparalleled production flexibility. General contractor Turner Construction completed the project in 8½ months, in time for the theater's opening performance September 20, 2008. —Jeffrey Yoders, Senior Associate Editor
Related Stories
| Apr 26, 2013
Documentary shows 'starchitects' competing for museum project
"The Competition," a new documentary produced by Angel Borrego Cuberto of Madrid, focuses on the efforts of five 'starchitects' to capture the design contract for the new National Museum of Art of Andorra: a small country in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.
| Apr 24, 2013
Los Angeles may add cool roofs to its building code
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants cool roofs added to the city’s building code. He is also asking the Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to create incentives that make it financially attractive for homeowners to install cool roofs.
| Apr 23, 2013
Architects to MoMA: Don't destroy Williams/Tsien project
Richard Meier, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Hugh Hardy and Robert A.M. Stern are among the prominent architects who on Monday called for the Museum of Modern Art to reconsider its decision to demolish the former home of the American Folk Art Museum.
| Apr 19, 2013
Must see: Shell of gutted church on stilts, 40 feet off the ground
Construction crews are going to extremes to save the ornate brick façade of the Provo (Utah) Tabernacle temple, which was ravaged by a fire in December 2010.
| Apr 17, 2013
First look: Renzo Piano's glass-domed motion pictures museum
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last week released preliminary plans for its $300 million Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences museum in Los Angeles, designed by Renzo Piano and local architect Zoltan Pali.
| Apr 16, 2013
5 projects that profited from insulated metal panels
From an orchid-shaped visitor center to California’s largest public works project, each of these projects benefited from IMP technology.
| Apr 12, 2013
Nation's first 'food forest' planned in Seattle
Seattle's Beacon Food Forest project is transforming a seven-acre lot in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood into a self-sustaining, edible public park.
| Apr 12, 2013
Chicago rail conversion puts local twist on High Line strategy
Plans are moving forward to convert an unused, century-old Chicago rail artery to a 2.7 mile, 13 acre recreational facility and transit corridor.
| Apr 11, 2013
George W. Bush Presidential Center achieves LEED Platinum certification
The George W. Bush Presidential Center announced today it has earned Platinum certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. The Bush Center is the first presidential library to achieve LEED Platinum certification under New Construction.