Written by Michael E. DeSanctis
Chair, Erie Philharmonic Board of Governors
Click here to learn more about Michael and his storied career.
The late Yale architectural historian, Vincent Scully (1920-2017), was fond of describing the art of building in strictly moral terms.
For Scully, great buildings and the cities that arose from them were the products of great men and women—good and courageous ones, at least, less interested in making a quick buck at the expense of others than in promoting the wellbeing of everyone in their communities.
“Nothing shows up more definitively in a building than a lack of love, unless it is a love of money,” Scully asserted in a 1985 essay for the New York Times lamenting the sad state of his beloved artform nationally and what it revealed about the American soul.
Though cynics might quibble with Scully’s observation, it’s hard not to agree that something gravely wrong has happened to the built environment in which Americans now find themselves.
To tour the cities and towns of our country nowadays is to encounter communities whose once-handsome urban cores have been left to decay for lack of the sort of popular attachment to place once considered an integral part of “civic-mindedness.”
Who can disagree that even in Erie, more often than not, we’ve been guilty of under-loving those parts of our city regarded too clunky, old-fashioned or reflective of the values of previous generations to warrant anything but a wrecking ball?
One wonders, for instance, what the profile of our downtown area might look like today as a welcome move toward historic preservation seems finally to be overtaking the city, had we not long ago torn down with blinding short-sightedness structures like the Commerce Building, the old Central Market or the Koehler Brewery, to name a few.
Which brings me to the recent completion of the Warner Theater renovation.
By all accounts, Erieites are thrilled with the improvements to the Warner.
The buzz generated by the mere lighting of the theater’s restored marquee—a month even before its doors were reopened to the public—suggests that the building holds a special place in the hearts of people throughout the Erie area.
After a spectacular, grand reopening matinee performance on January 23 by the Erie Philharmonic and, less than a week later, a sold-out “Music of the Knights” event likewise provided by the Phil, word has spread quickly not only that the Warner is the place to be for world-class stage entertainment but, more generally, that maybe it really is possible for a community to pour new wine into existing wineskins.
Native Erieites, especially, who remember the Warner primarily as a Depression-era movie house, are bound to be amazed by the improvements made to the theater’s stage, a deeper, higher and more resonant space than they’re likely to have experienced previously.
It is bright and beautiful, too, when its wood-paneled shell is inserted for symphonic and choral performances.
What the Warner’s rejuvenation means to Erie cannot be overestimated.
From my perspective as a trained architectural historian and the current chair of the Erie Philharmonic Board of Governors, it’s the harbinger of a new way of thinking about Erie set in opposition of the defeatism that has too long sold this city and it residents short in the marketplace of possibilities.
All around the city right now, in fact, there’s evidence of a can-do spirit taking hold, one more respectful of the past than prevailed during the decades when “urban renewal” projects of one kind or another were regarded the only way of saving a rusting, heavy-manufacturing town like ours.
West 6th Street Renovations
The string of historic buildings along Erie’s so-called Millionaire’s Row on West 6th Street to have recently undergone restoration, alone, is impressive, not to mention the ongoing transformation of the parcels comprising North Park Row and planned restoration of the Richard Arms towers.
The collection of first-rate buildings on the Bayfront is truly beginning to coalesce.
And who hasn’t marveled at the sheer scale at which the Erie Insurance Company continues to transform its corporate campus and surroundings to the benefit of more than just its employees.
The affection we hold for our city, briefly ritualized each August during the CelebrateErie days, underlies the greater season of pride and accomplishment into which we’re now entering.
The Warner’s renovated frame stands prominently at its start, a thing to be loved and boasted about—and with it the whole of this scrappy, little city of ours, where, for better or worse, our respective lives and fortunes are intertwined.