Road Trip! Part 1

On Saturday night the esteemed bass player Mr. Ether (a.k.a. "Dog Park Guy") had a gig with the Reptile Palace Orchestra at the Mabel Tainter Theater in Menomonie, WI. I had been hearing about this theater for years and jumped at the chance to see it. It was built in the late nineteenth century by a lumber baron as a memorial to his daughter who died. (Interestingly enough -- to me anyway -- he built it at the urging of a local Unitarian minister; I don't tend to think of Unitarians as being active or even existent in the north woods of Wisconsin in the nineteenth century!)

I took the interior photos in the evening while the band was doing their sound check. Mr. Ether took the exterior photos the next morning. While the photos (especially mine) don't really do it justice, you can perhaps get an idea of the opulence of the place. All stained glass, velvet, tassels, and carved wood. It took my breath away.

Looking out across the theater from one of the boxes. Notice the balcony seating too.


This is one of the radiators in the foyer. I had never seen a cylindrical radiator before.


The organ.


One of the boxes.

A stained glass window commemorating Andrew Tainter, the lumber baron.

Some views from the outside.



Thankfully the building survived more than a century of change, including the death of Wisconsin's lumber industry. (You can't sustain the lumber industry when you clear cut virtually all of the trees, strangely enough.) It went through a period of being a Unitarian meeting house and then a public library. The theater was restored in the early nineteen eighties, and now serves as an arts center for the area.

It is said to be haunted. I looked for orbs in my photos, but sadly couldn't see any.