on friday night, the lansdowne theater held its opening gala. the theater itself had already reopened late last year, but this felt like the true grand celebration — the exhale after an almost twenty-year effort to bring an old giant back to life.

since 2013, i’ve been on the board of the HLTC, the non-profit created with the intention of saving, restoring, and maintaining the fiscal viability of one of the last great 1920s movie houses in the Philadelphia region. one of the reasons i joined in the first place was because i believed the theater could help bring lansdowne back to life. with friends, i had opened the avenue delicatessen next door because we wanted to be part of the revitalization of downtown lansdowne, and i always thought the theater could be the anchor project — the economic engine, the cultural magnet, the thing that made people come back to the avenue on purpose.

now, i think it is.

the board of directors with executive director matt schultz (left). lead by bob jara (on the right) since it’s inception. incredible team, incredible result! kudos all around.

lansdowne has always had the bones. it has history, character, great people, beautiful old houses, and the feeling of a real town. but every town wants a main street that feels alive, and for years lansdowne needed a spark. the theater was always the biggest, boldest version of that possibility. now when i see people lined up outside, or hear them walk out of a show saying, “wow, this building is incredible,” it feels like the vision is becoming real. this town is becoming a destination again. the lansdowne theater will become a concert destination.

the building itself is extraordinary. it opened on june 1, 1927, was designed by william h. lee, and was built in a hollywood moorish / spanish revival style, with a spanish courtyard-like lobby and a spectacularly ornate auditorium ceiling that feels like a portal to another era. after decades of decline following the 1987 electrical fire during beverly hills cop ii, the HLTC the building bought it in 2007 and spent years stabilizing, restoring, fundraising, financing, and clawing its way toward reopening. what looked like a roughly $10 million dream when i got involved became a $21 million-plus reality by the end, once actual surveys and drawings were completed. that’s what happens when time stretches, costs rise, covid hits, supply chains go haywire, and a complicated restoration refuses to behave.

people don’t always understand how hard projects like this are, especially when they are built in public view and depend majorly on fundraising. there were criticisms. there were rumors. there were plenty of moments where it would have been easy for the whole thing to quietly die. but it didn’t. it survived because a lot of people cared enough to keep moving it forward.

and one of the people who carried more of that burden than anyone was matt schultz.

as the public face of the project for years, matt took the hits. he absorbed the criticism. he kept showing up. he never gave up. hearing him introduced at the gala and hearing the long list of public-good projects he has made happen in lansdowne was honestly.. so moving. he’s one of the kindest men you could ever meet, a true man of the people, and i am honored to call him a friend. he could have left this project many times for easier and better-paying opportunities, but he stayed because the building mattered to him – and lansdowne mattered to him. standing on stage friday night, in the blackout of the lights, hearing matt get emotional during his speech, made my heart warm. nobody deserved that night more.

what struck me most about the gala was that the building no longer felt like a project.

it felt alive.

fully restored, and ready to breathe.

the lobby was loud and boisterous, full of people grabbing drinks, talking, laughing, reconnecting. it felt like what we always wanted it to be: a real community hub. a third place. a living room for the region. while standing on stage with the other board members while the spotlights washed out the crowd, i couldn’t see a single face — just blackness and light — but i could hear them. you could feel the pulse of the place. it felt like the building was breathing again. it had a soul again. we resuscitated it. all of us.

for me, that hit on a very personal level.

my dad grew up around the corner from the theater on north maple avenue, one of fifteen children in that house. lansdowne held so much for him — his parents, his siblings, his stories, his memories, the whole emotional architecture of a hometown that shaped him. some of my own happiest memories are tied up there too: fourth of july celebrations with all the grandkids piled into the back of a pickup truck float decorated like “the little old woman who lived in a shoe,” the “flounders farewell” party when the last flounder moved out of maple ave, the years i spent at the deli. lansdowne can invoke that old warm feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself. one of my only real memories of the theater itself as a kid is my dad tricking us into going to see the land before time. i don’t even remember the full story clearly. i just remember the feeling of being there with him, of childhood, of surprise, of warmth.

https://blossom.primal.net/214508e0fa7df9494bee6d13626c4f4dbdadca79e5c62dc6354e35cfafe44435.mp4

soooi couldn’t find the home video of the “little old woman who lived in a shoe” because my dad had the “brilliant” thought at some point in his life that it would be “more fun” to watch home movies out of order. so he would switch his VHS tapes in his over-the-shoulder VHS recorder all the time so they were out of order. it was not more fun. at all. hahaha. classic dad, though. anyway, enjoy this news clip he recorded that hits home the nostalgia and americana points well, i think (he recorded because my family shows up for a brief moment at the end of the clip… and then keep watching to enjoy some backyard chaos of 6 or so kids as a bonus treat! look how thrilled my mom is that dad is recording her!)

i really wish he had gotten to see the restored theater.

i think if he had walked into it with me, he might have just gone silent for a minute or two, eyes glassed over. looked around in disbelief. taken in the ceiling, the room, the scale of it, the sounds, the fact that this old place from his childhood had been brought back to life. and then maybe he would have said, “jesus brian, you did it.”

and i would have said, “we did it.”

because that’s the truth of it. this was never one person. it took a community. it took board members past and present, hundreds or thousands of donors, volunteers, contractors, elected officials, neighbors, believers, and some sheer stubbornness that bordered on miraculous. it took people refusing to let the building become something dead and forgettable. it took miracle worker matt schultz… honestly.

there have been a few moments since opening where i felt deep down, this was all worth it. one was sneaking into the back of the auditorium after a thursday night board meeting and hearing lyle lovett and john hiatt playing to the theater’s first sold-out crowd. the acoustics were impeccable. the crowd was in awe. another was taking my mom to see graham nash and sitting there in another sold-out auditorium, feeling nothing but pride. and of course, the first was watching the band “1964: the tribute”, a cover band of my dad’s favorite (the beatles, duh) – and looking around at smiling faces under that incredible ceiling while thinking about him. those were the moments when the years of meetings and delays and fundraising and headaches suddenly collapsed into something simple: this place is real again.

i love music. i LOVE live music. i love old buildings. i love what happens when people gather in a room with history and soul. but this project also touched something deeper in me that has always been there. i feel most alive when i get to help create something from nothing. when charcoal on white paper turns into a face. when a box of ingredients becomes a home cooked meal. when lines of code turn into software that helps doctors practice the art of medicine while streamlining the science of it. when an empty or broken thing becomes useful, beautiful, and alive again.

this theater felt like that on the grandest possible scale.

mid-resotration, ish – the building “cleaned out” and the old chairs all removed, basically. but wow, we came a long way.

friday night was fun. it was moving. it was surreal. it made me proud — proud of myself, proud of the board members i’ve served with, proud of matt and president bob jara, proud of lansdowne, proud that my mom and sister and heady ed were there and sitting in the seats that bear a plaque with my dads name on it, proud that so many family members and friends showed up or reached out to say they were thinking of us. but more than anything, it made me grateful. grateful that i got to be a part of something this meaningful. grateful that lansdowne has this building back. grateful that my dad, wherever he is or isn’t, would have understood exactly why this all mattered.

and the work is not over. the theater still needs stewardship. it still needs support. it still needs people who believe that places like this matter. but for one night at least, standing there under those lights, it felt like all the years and all the effort had resolved into one simple, beautiful truth:

the lansdowne theater is alive again.

i’ll see you on the avenue.

donations welcome!

#create