The Jamestown barber has helped salvage 400 wooden seats from Memorial Hall, once a mecca for professional wrestling, for the ongoing restoration of the Greene County opera house.
When news broke two years ago that the Springfield landmark built in 1915 would be demolished, the Jamestown Historical Society asked for its pick of Memorial Hall’s seats for its decade-long opera house project.
They just couldn’t be all that picky.
“There was bird crap and everything else all over that place,” said Sesslar, a Jamestown native who’s president of the village historical society. “We found a section in there that the wind and rain didn’t hit.
“People ought to take care of stuff. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
The seats, which cost the historical society $600, were taken apart and hauled south.
Of course, Jamestown’s late 19th-century opera house wasn’t much nicer when the project to resuscitate it began.
“It was a mess,” Sesslar grumbled.
Only 60 or so of the original opera house seats could be found.
Done with volunteer labor, work admittedly has slowed in the past year with the disappearance of $275,000 in federal, state and county grants that were handed out in more robust economic times.
But with 186 of Memorial Hall’s seats now refurbished and placed in the main auditorium, the Jamestown Opera House is able to once again host regular programs for the first time since 1937, when activities moved to a new school.
The other 214 seats will be installed in the balcony beginning this summer.
“Have a seat, my friend,” Sesslar said, pulling down a seat. “You’re talking about a performance that takes you back in time. You don’t need no acoustics in here. You can whisper and people will hear you.”
There’s the irony — Memorial Hall had notoriously bad acoustics.
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
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