On the afternoon, five years ago, when the friends of Hope Quackenbush gathered at the darkened Morris A. Mechanic Theatre to memorialize that institution’s guiding hand, the great Broadway producer Liz McCann showed up to offer a few words that come to mind today.
“We are superstitious people in the theater,” McCann said. “We believe that great theaters have spirits. You can sometimes hear the voices of very great actors who have played that theater. This theater has the spirit of Hope Quackenbush. Nothing wrong will ever happen on this stage as long as her spirit keeps watch over it.”
Well, the words were lovely and heartfelt, but the echo feels a little hollow on days such as this. Nobody’s quite sure what’s to happen with the former Mechanic Theatre, once one of the brightest symbols of downtown’s rebirth but now an empty shell with a mysterious future.
Quackenbush, its former managing director and the woman who astonished the theater world from here to New York by building the Mechanic’s subscriber base from 3,000 to 22,000 and helped create a glow over what had been a deserted downtown, died in late 2003.
The building’s been closed since 2004, with the refurbished Hippodrome now hosting shows that once would have played the Mechanic. It’s roughly a year since the Mechanic was gutted and all of its 1,600 seats removed.
If McCann was right about actors’ spirits haunting a theater, some of those ghosts must be storming and ranting right now.
There was a meeting scheduled for today, involving members of the Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) and other city planners. But the meeting’s been postponed. So we’re left to wonder a little longer about the building’s future.
“We don’t know what plans are in the works,” said Eddie Leon, a city planner for CHAP. “We know there’s an architect, and new designs are being proposed, but we haven’t seen them.”
One proposal is to divvy up the old theater: retail space at street level, and a tower with apartments and hotel rooms. One other suggestion: demolition, and start all over again.
“That’s why we put it on the historic landmark list, to protect it from demolition,” said Leon. “There’s always an outlying fear.”
But getting it on the historic landmark list requires approval from the City Council and the city planning commission. The commission was supposed to take its vote today, before that meeting was scratched.
In the meantime, the building is now owned by individuals from Arrow Parking, which runs the garage beneath the Mechanic, and a Baltimore County firm, David Brown Enterprises.
“The theater is not just a building,” says Robert C. Embry, president of the nonprofit Abell Foundation and a CHAP commissioner. “It was a great symbol of downtown’s rebirth. But it’s also a building. Somebody owns it and pays taxes on it, and they’ve got their own thoughts on how to develop it.”
There’s a lot resting on this. When the Mechanic first opened its doors, in 1967, it was not precisely an overnight sensation. The city was on the verge of riots that left downtown intimidated and empty after dark for a long time.
Then, in 1976, with the Mechanic on the verge of closing, Broadway impresario Alexander Cohen was brought in to breathe life into the place, and Quackenbush was named publicity director. The combination was dynamite — and, within two years, Cohen was back in New York full time and Quackenbush was running the theater.
Suddenly, the Mechanic seemed a symbol of great possibilities for all of downtown, and gave courage to those such as James Rouse, who was putting together a little project called Harborplace.
At the Mechanic, they brought in marvelous Broadway productions — “A Chorus Line” and “Equus,” “Chicago” and “The Wiz,” “The Elephant Man” and “Sweeney Todd,” “The American Clock” and “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” and “Sophisticated Ladies,” and on and on.
The glow from those shows (and the crowds) helped cast out the darkness from downtown. From a historic perspective, such things matter. But it matters, economically, that the Mechanic building sits atop maybe the area’s busiest Metro stop, and is surrounded by business locations — some busy, some empty — and bustling foot traffic.
“I’ll listen to whatever plans anybody wants to offer,” Embry said. “But it’d be nice if they’d re-open it as a theater.”
Maybe he was just dreaming aloud. Or maybe he could hear the spirit of those actors Liz McCann talked about. They’re hoping for a great closing act — one that doesn’t bring down the house.
