A new hope for the Guild Theatre

Photo by Michael Lloyd for The Oregonian 

It wasn't long ago in Portland's history that downtown was home to numerous old single-screen movie theaters: the Fox, the Music Box, the Broadway. But today most all of them are gone. And the Guild, which shuttered four years ago, may have been the last of them. But as reported by David Stabler of The Oregonian last week, a little known arts group, Opera Theater Oregon, is seeking to bring the Guild back to life.

Opera Theater Oregon would like to gain management of the theater, which is owned by real estate developer Tom Moyer, and rent it out to other like-minded performance arts groups and show movies as well. Moyer, who developed the Fox Tower across Director Park from the Guild, as well as the planned Park Avenue West tower which was halted after early stages of construction, has granted OTO permission to make an offer. 

Katie Taylor, artistic director of OTO, told Stabler, "We envision the Guild Opera House becoming a nerve center for the tasty mixture of high culture and pop culture that groups like ours, Portland Cello Project, Filmusik, Vagabond Opera, Pink Martini, Live Wire and others have been successfully cultivating over the past decade."

OTO, as you might expect, does not have deep pockets. The idea would be for the opera company to bring in a pro bono consultant team, raise money and renovate the theater in exchange for five years of free rent. Taylor previously spent 17 years as a marketer for architects and engineers and is working with KPFF Consulting Engineers on surveying, structural and civil engineering. 

"Portland's music groups certainly need a hall that is medium sized, centrally located and acoustically inviting," Stabler writes.

Studio Building and Guild Theater, image courtesy Daily Journal of Commerce  

The Guild enjoys an interesting history along with its adjacent building. As related by the Daily Journal of Commerce's Aaron Spencer in an April 7 article, the Guild is attached to the circa-1927, the Studio Building, a nine-story building that originally 128 rehearsal studios for musicians and actors. The building is lined with original busts of famous composers. The attached Guild Theatre, as it's now called, was a 450-seat recital hall. They were built to operate in tandem. But the Guild became a separate entity during the Great Depression when the music publishing business declined.

However, it's the issue of bathrooms belonging to a Studio Building tenant that could threaten the Guild's chance for a comeback. It turns out that the Guild's bathrooms were actually located in space belonging to the ground-floor Studio Building tenant, which is currently Pastini Pastaria. "We were told, 'It's in your leasehold space. So go ahead and tear them out," Pastini co-owner Susan Bashel told Spencer.

Without bathrooms, the Northwest Film Center, which occupied the theater at the time, moved out. And now, it could be bathrooms that keep the new Guild project from going forward. You tell me, architects, code experts and building industry professionals: Is there a way an agreement could be made for a shared bathroom between the Guild and Pastini, or some other arrangement that could keep this opportunity from being...well, flushed away?

The possibility of the Guild coming back evokes movie-going memories for lots of us. Oregonian film critic Shawn Levy, for example, had this remembrance:

I started attending movies at the Guild in the mid-'80s, when it was among a number of theaters downtown that were holding on but just barely.  And yet it never seemed likely to go under.  

To me...the Guild seemed like it could survive anything, let alone the caprices of taste or business.  It was crouched to the ground and bunkered; it felt like a warren. In fact, to be honest, it was a terrible place to watch movies in many ways. The ceiling was low, and the old-tech heating and cooling systems roared. The sound was bad (not the acoustics: the equipment), and the layout was crazy -- bathrooms in front, an aisle down the center of the rows of seats. And the upkeep, well:  My father-in-law, Paul Bartholemy, worked in the place in the '50s when he was at Central Catholic, and I used to joke in the '90s that I suspected that he was the last guy to give the floor a good, thorough scrubbing.

Although I attended my first screening at the Guild in 1990 (Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues), I most remember the Guild from the several years in the late '90s and early '00s I spent reviewing movies. For much of that time, it was home to the Northwest Film Center, which besides great year-round programming of classic films, documentaries and such, produces the Portland International Film Festival. Each February, about a week before the festival began, I would be there for a succession of matinee preview screenings for press, watching two or sometimes three movies there a day. (Among my favorites were In the Mood for Love, Memento, and When the Rain Lifts.)

Guild Theatre sign, photo courtesy Mokolabs via Flickr 

I also remember speaking alongside Oregon Symphony conductor Murray Sidlin at the Guild the night before Thanksgiving in 2001, about the relationship between comedy and tragic historic events. Our talk had been paired with the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be Or Not To Be with Jack Benny. Unfortunately Sidlin didn't find very funny some of the satirical headlines I read from The Onion about the September 11 attacks. ("Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell", "U.S. Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We're At War With")

As most of us know from experience, single-screen movie houses have a special ambiance. Most of the surviving ones are rough around the edges. The Guild certainly was. But the red velvet curtains and squeaky reclining chairs, the dark setting pierced by projector light: it added up to something deeper and more special than the sum of its parts. Old movie houses are at once vast and intimate, dingy and grand. I like to think of cities as collections of different kinds of buildings and places. Of course not all of our cultural past can be preserved, but I don't think it's so unreasonable for a city of Portland's size to support one old such theater.

My first time at the Guild 

The Guild was never the most exceptional local movie house, but it's the last of a breed. Perhaps it's a bit of a pipe dream for an arts organization most people have never heard of to turn around a decrepit old theater when it has no money and the theater occupies prime downtown real estate. But one often hears that a strength of Portland's broader arts community is its collaborative spirit and ingenuity amidst limited benefaction and financial support. Might the Guild, and what it stands for in our local cultural and interior architectural history, be worth rallying around?

Comments

[Jane Jarrett]

Opera Theatre Oregon may be "little known" but surely they are smart enough to solve the bathroom issue! They have a terrific idea, an amazing location and some great resources in the community on their side. I hope they set "The Little Engine That Could" to music!

[Lyle]

Katie Taylor has one of the sweetest Operatic voices you can find. I would love to hear her sing in the Guild.

[Katie Taylor]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for an interesting and enjoyable read! I just wanted to drop by to reinforce that the main reason this project is feasible at all for Opera Theater Oregon is the support and generosity of the A/E community. Our pro bono team now includes Diloreto Architects, KPFF for civil and structural engineering, PAE for mechanical, electrical and lighting, forensic architect and ADA specialist Gary Olmon and Ball Janik for legal support. ACE Oregon is also interested in observing the project, if we get the go-ahead.

Your observation about the collaborative nature of the Portland arts community is spot on as well. We've been getting all kinds of help from every quarter. World Affairs Council, Chamber Music Northwest, Northwest Film Center, Filmusik, Electric Opera Company, Portland Cello Project and others have all expressed an interest in presenting at the Guild if we can get the doors open.

Thanks very much for the well wishes, and for sharing your fond memories of the Guild. It is a great little theater, and, as you said, the last of its kind downtown. What excites me the most about this project is the chance to restore a piece of Portland's cultural heritage that clearly resonates with so many people.

Also thanks, Lyle! I blush. :)

[Mike Meade]

Is there a way an agreement could be made for a shared bathroom between the Guild and Pastini, or some other arrangement that could keep this opportunity from being...well, flushed away?

This may be harder than you would first imagine. By code, assembly spaces have a very large quantity of toilet spaces required as you have large groups of people who tend to all move to the restrooms at the same time. There is likely not enough capacity in the adjacent restaurant to make this work. I would also think that the restaurant would have qualms about adding an unsecured back door.

I hope that it can be done, but if it were easy it would likely have been done by the building owner already.

[Daniel Ronan]

With regard to the Bathroom issue, I know that there is a set up in Old Town at Floyd's Coffee where they share bathrooms from a neighboring business. Perhaps they could provide insight on this current situation? They underwent a lot of renovation before they opened last year.

[Kristi Krueger]

Having worked with Katie Taylor and being familiar with her drive and power to bring people together, anyone would be hard-pressed to convince me she couldn't pull this off. With connections to the music and art community and her extensive relationships with the architecture and engineering sector, Katie is uniquely positioned to make something like this happen.