It took more than four years and nearly $20 million to put the Atlas back on the map.
Now, after a thorough gut-renovation, the 1930s-era Art Deco building on H Street in Northeast Washington is again functioning as a community theater.
The Atlas Performing Arts Center celebrated its grand reopening with black-tie galas Wednesday through Saturday nights featuring cocktails, dinner and a performance of Coming Home, a play on the history of H Street written by David Emerson Toney.
When Jane Lang, who chairs the board of the nonprofit formed to run the theater, first saw the building in 2001 she had what she calls “an epiphany.”
“Maybe it was a moment of insanity, actually,” Lang said.
The Atlas opened as a movie theater and occasional community playhouse in 1938. The first movie shown was “Love Finds Andy Hardy” and the opening was celebrated with a swing band.
The Atlas was shuttered in the 1970s following the 1968 riots, which ravaged H Street along with much of the city’s famouslyblack historic arts districts.
When the nonprofit Lang and her husband, Paul Spreger, helped to form acquired the building in 2002, the ceiling was leaking and mold had taken over parts of it. A capital campaign kicked off that year raised the money necessary for the renovation.
“The condition was what you might expect of an abandoned 65-year-old building,” Lang said. “The space was gutted. There was nothing in it. We got new floors, new walls. A new roof. I think when you see it, you will be pretty amazed.”
The renovation incorporates some of the elements of the old facility into the new one, including the mammonth old air conditioning grates, but adds some new touches, including backlit lettering above entryways. About 300 people who attended Friday’s performance marvelled at the work.
The Atlas itself is near the H Street Playhouse, another community theater that opened about three years ago.
Lang wants to see the area thrive as an arts district.
“I think that we form the core of the performing arts corridor for the H Street corridor,” Lang said.
