Does your town have any old buildings for sale? Not just an old warehouse or an old house, but an old building of historical significance?
Mine does. It’s called the Historic Elk Rapids Town Hall and it’s up for sale as I write this.
Built in 1883, it was meant to be a statement piece advertising Elk Rapids as the place to be in the late 19th century, which it was.
A few economic booms and busts later, Elk Rapids might not be the hub of lumber and iron production it was 140 years ago but the old hall remains as a reminder of where we once stood.
At its peak, the hall hosted the who’s who of vaudeville entertainment that traveled through the region. It served as the basketball court for the local high school team, and the stage for the school drama department.
But as old buildings do, it aged out of prominence. The vaudeville age waned, our town built a more modern school with a modern gymnasium and a state of the art performing arts auditorium. No surprise then that since about 1960 the Historic Elk Rapids Town Hall has faced demolition in favor of a changing modern world, which is where this column began. The irony, of course, is that the older the hall has become and as advanced as the modern world has become, the more valuable and unique the old place has become.
The Elk Rapids Players, a community theater group formed by myself and a few others to raise money for the hall, has used the stage, wings, and dressing rooms since 2010. Amazingly, the acoustics of this structure are as close to perfect as can be found. Modern technology dampens the sounds that you don’t want and electronically amplifies the sounds that you do want. This building that was constructed before electricity was an expected amenity passes sound waves efficiently via hardwood floors, tin ceilings, and straight walls. None of the over-20 plays and musicals performed on the stage in the last 15 years have required a single microphone.
When the town of Elk Rapids was the Antrim County seat, the building served as the county jail. A single, unused, jail cell occupied a corner of the basement until it was repurposed into a liquor cabinet for the local restaurant that handles alcohol service for hall functions. Perhaps as important as its acoustics, the building remains an open floor plan meeting space. Not that having access to alcohol is vital, but nowhere else in our corner of the county can a large group of people get together indoors to share company and enjoy an adult beverage. When the ER Players were having trouble drawing large crowds to their fall shows we realized that far more women were coming to the shows than men. We lobbied to get bar service installed to encourage their male counterparts to show up, too.
It’s a beautiful hall and to lose it after having had it for 140 years would be a mistake to be explained to people for the rest of our lives. As I’ve described, buildings are not made like this today. But that doesn’t mean that buildings like this are no longer necessary. This particular one has our town’s name on the outside, its legacy on the inside, and it needs to be saved.
I hope your town has one this nice.