Main Floor

Main Floor Theatre

The interior of the Brown Grand auditorium is a breath-taking site. One can only imagine the thrill of the opening night audience in 1907. On opening night of September 17, 1907, New York's Joseph M. Gaites Company presented the musical play The Vanderbilt Cup. The production had played eight months at the Broadway Theatre in New York and three months at the Colonial Theatre in Chicago. The Harry Steinberg Orchestra from Topeka accompanied the singers and action from the orchestra pit. The highlight of the play came when two vintage racing cars appeared to be speeding along at one hundred miles per hour. This effect was achieved by revolving painted scenery behind two cars. As the background flashed by, stagehands, pulling cables attached to each car shifted their positions as each driver appeared to be jockeying for the lead.

During the 1st year 33 plays presented as well as a magician, band, variety show, & concerts.The opera house operated as a theatre for live entertainment under the management of Earl Van Doren Brown until his death in 1911. The two widows soon gave the theatre to the city to manage.

The city ran the theatre until 1916, when it became such a financial burden that they returned it to the Brown family. Ray Green, Gertrude Brown's second husband, managed the theatre until 1925 when they sold it to the Concordia Amusement Company which planned to turn it into a movie theatre.. As a movie theater in 1929, it underwent several remodelings and redecorations. It remained a movie theatre for approximately 50 years.

In the mid-1970's several civic minded people who wanted to see the play house restored started a movement to restore it. The Brown Grand Theatre was recognized as a National Historic Building and was listed as such in the National Historic Register. The official date was July 26, 1973. Soon after, the Roneys , who had owned the theatre since 1968, were asked to sell the theatre to the city to be restored. the theatre's restoration was selected as a community Bicentennial Project. The building was purchased and the restoration process began in 1976. It was completed in 1980. The Napoleon drop curtain was replaced and the seats were replaced but that is just a small portion of what had to be done.

Everything had been painted pink, blue and silver, the lower four boxes had been torn out, all the seats had been removed and replaced. The plaster on the walls was crumbling and falling off. They had closed off the top balcony entirely, the lobby of the first balcony along with several stairways and openings. They had added projection booths and several rest rooms.

The roof leaked so badly that if it started to rain when you were watching a movie the patrons had to move under the balconies to stay dry. There were cables running through the auditorium holding the outer walls in.

When they started the restoration, they removed all the old seats, brought in huge beams to level off the main floor and built a forty foot scaffolding to work on the walls and ceiling.

Two local men did all the gilding throughout the theatre. They found the original pattern for the stenciling behind the radiator over on the east wall because it had not been painted over. They did all the gilding in their spare time as their donation to the theatre. It took them three years. Because of the upper boxes, they couldn't get their scaffolding close enough to the sides to pain above them so one of them would hold the other's feet as he hung out over the edge and painted.

All the fabrics and carpets throughout the theatre were especially dyed during the restoration to match those of the originals with pieces of the paints chemically analyzed to get the exact colors.

Box Seats

The lower box seat (2nd from the front of the stage) on the west is the colonel's box. He did not step foot into the theatre until opening night, leaving the entire project in his son's hands.

Even though the box seats are not particularly good seats, people paid more for them so that they could be seen. On opening night, the box seats were $10 a ticket, the main floor was five, the first balcony was $2.50 and the top balcony was a dollar..The original straight-backed caned chairs with no arms were a symbol of wealth. In addition they kept the ladies in their corsets propped up straight so that their full gowns would be seen. This is the reason the railings were so low, so that everyone could see the expensive finery of the people in the box seats.

Napoleon Drape

The Napoleon Drape, which hangs in the Brown Grand Theatre in Concordia, KS, was a gift to Napoleon Bonaparte Brown from his son Earl on opening night, September 17, 1907. This is a reproduction of the original. In 1967, a tornado blew part of the roof off backstage and the rain severely damaged the original curtain and scenic backdrops. When the restoration was being done, a local philanthropic woman, Marian Cook, offered to pay for a reproduction in honor of her late husband.

The company that had painted the original curtain, the Twin Cities Scenic company of Minneapolis MN, was still in business. They felt they could reproduce the curtain accurately. They hired one of two men in the country that they felt could paint the center scene. He worked for $50 an hour and repainted the center section four times before he was satisfied. The retired president of the company came out of retirement to paint the frame and curtain around it. The two artists requested a color photograph of the original Vernet work "Battle of Wagram" which hangs in the Hall of Battles in the Palace of Versailles near Paris. The curtain is actually mis-titled but it was decided to leave the original title on it. After a few failing efforts, Mrs. Cook finally obtained the needed photograph and it was sent to Minneapolis.Supposedly, someone went to the palace and snuck a camera into the museum, quickly snapped a picture and left. The total cost of the new drop was approximately $9000.

Soon after, the Minneapolis company burned to the ground and was never rebuilt, making this one of the last curtains in the United States that this famous company completed. Therefore this curtain is not only significant to the theatre but also to the history of theatre in the United States.

Balcony

The brass railings on all three levels of the theatre were added during the restoration for insurance purposes. They have to be polished once or twice a week since they are not lacquered. There is 258 feet of brass railing. In addition, there are 199 steps, 50 windows, 8 toilets, 14 sinks, and over 500 light bulbs.

Rumor has it that Earl's ghost haunts the theatre and has been seen in the second floor balcony. During the rehearsal of a play, both the director and the actors saw a ghostly figure up here in the balcony. Other strange unexplained occurrences have been attributed to the ghost, such as power failures, doors opening and closing, etc.

The most recent episode happened during a wedding. The bride & groom had previously had a child. At some point in the wedding, the child was brought up on stage for a family blessing. During this part of the wedding, all of the photographs had a very strange greenish unexplainable and indistinguishable reflection in them. The photographer, who has over 30 years of photographic experience, swears he didn't see anything while he was taking the pictures, yet when the digital images were displayed, the aura was there. The series of shots ends with an unexplained green spot of light on the floor of the stage.

Earl & his wife had a great love of children and had a stillborn child. Each Christmas, Earl & Gertrude would hold a Christmas party here where the children of the community were invited to the Brown Grand. They were each given a small American flag; they came in and sang "America The Beautiful," then the curtain was raised to unveil a large Christmas tree with presents under it. Each child was given a present. If the ghost is Earl and he does have a soft spot for children, it would be appropriate for him to hover over a small child on stage.

Theatre Seats

The main seats in the auditorium had been replaced when it was converted to a movie theatre. The seats you you now see were given to the theatre by Bethany College in Lindsborg, since they were replacing them in a recital hall. They are almost identical to the original seats. The originals were covered in green leather rather than the velvet and they had small pin cushions on the backs because the ladies were required to remove their hats and needed some place to put them. The auditorium now seats approximately 650 people. When it was first built, it was advertised as seating 1000. This was possible because the upper balcony was only benches instead of seats.