Basie Theater Renovation Turns Back the Clock 82 Years

Basie Theater Renovation Turns Back the Clock 82 Years

Laura Pedrick for The New York Times
NEW LUSTER Renovation of the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank has restored much of its original splendor.

By COLEEN DEE BERRY
Published: November 7, 2008
RED BANK

FOR years, performers like Bruce Springsteen, George Carlin and Whoopi Goldberg took the stage at the aging Count Basie Theater amid decaying plaster and leaking ceilings. Repairmen stood on call to fix any seat that suddenly gave way.

“We used to tell the performers that the audience here was great; the house itself, not so good,” said Numa Saisselin, the chief executive of the 82-year-old theater. “Now we no longer have to make excuses. For all those who kept the faith and kept coming back here, we finally have a house worthy of their performances.”

The paint is dry, new carpet has been installed and the scaffolding has come down at the newly renovated theater, on Monmouth Street. The reopening show, a rock and soul revue on Oct. 30, sold out, and tickets for a Nov. 8 performance by Tony Bennett have also.

Red Bank residents were invited to an open house at the 1,500-seat theater a day before the first show for an advance peek at the renovation work. Lori Kislin, a Red Bank native, said she spent every Saturday of her childhood watching movies at the theater. “They did a wonderful job,” she said. “The new dome is just gorgeous.”

Just before the reopening, the theater received word that it had been recommended by a state review board for listing on both the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places.
The goal of the $7.8 million renovation project was to restore the theater’s interior to its 1926 grandeur.

Many people volunteered time, work or money. One was Mr. Springsteen, who has a long association with the Count Basie, and whose wife, Patty Scialfa, sits on the theater foundation’s board of directors. (The couple has homes in nearby Rumson and Colts Neck.) In May, Mr. Springsteen and his band, including Ms. Scialfa, performed a benefit concert at the theater, raising $3 million. Mr. Springsteen was introduced onstage by the NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who grew up in Middletown.

Lee S. Babitt, president of Gibraltar Construction Corporation, who acted as general construction manager, donated the cost of his company’s services. “We could have never done this without Lee,” said Rusty Young, chief executive of the theater foundation. “He not only completed this on time in three and a half months, he saved us $800,000.”
Mr. Babitt had never been to the Basie until he volunteered for the project. “Once here, you can tell how much this place means to the community,” he said. “It’s a much-loved theater.”
First known as the Carlton, the theater was the last project of Joseph Oschwald, a prominent builder who lived in Little Silver and Newark. Although the theater had a stage, it was built primarily as a movie house, according to Oschwald’s granddaughter Barbara Wingerter, a Red Bank resident. “You can tell it was a movie house because the dressing rooms are so small,” she said.

In 1973 an anonymous donor saved the building from demolition, and in 1984, the theater, then known as the Monmouth Arts Center, was rechristened for the jazz great Count Basie, born in Red Bank in 1904. It is run by a nonprofit corporation.

Tradesmen scraped away old paint to come up with the original palette of golds, maroons and greens. “We don’t know exactly what color every little thing was painted,” Mr. Saisselin said. “But we do know this is the range of colors they used.”
Now dragons cavort over grillwork and carpeting, and exotic faces peer down from decorative columns. A new patron’s lounge was added.

Originally painted copper, the starburst dome, with its circular mural of fluffy white clouds in an azure sky, dominates the first floor of the theater. “The atmospheric mural is not original, but it works,” Mr. Saisselin said. “That’s our 2008 stamp on the building.”