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- Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Shelbyville at city park Forest Park, and behind me is the last remaining Chautauqua auditorium in the state of Illinois.

It's been over 100 years ago since this queen of that movement was built, and it's been here ever since, and it's still used for local functions, entertainment and things like that.

We're here today to talk about this building, the history of it and the future of it, because there's a group that wants to preserve this building because it's the last one of a kind.

Wayne Gray, you're a member of that committee, this preservation committee that wants to see this grande dame of Chautauqua buildings preserved.

How come?

- I've lived most of my life in Shelbyville, and this building has been here since 1903.

It's an amazing structure.

In my youth, we spent a lot of time around this building.

There were a lot of things that went on here.

We had national acts that came and performed here, such as Dolly Parton and Barbara Mandrell.

It's always been the center of the park, and to me, it's the center of the town.

It's so unique that you just can't not like the building.

It's a one of a kind.

You said it's the last one in Illinois.

The architect we have working on this, Chuck Bell, says it's the last one in the country, and maybe in the world.

- No kidding?

- Yes, and the structure is very unique from the standpoint that you have a clear span inside of 150 feet, and the building is round in shape.

There's 20 sides to the building.

You can see the clerestory windows at the top.

It's got a natural air conditioning effect to it when the windows are open and the doors are open.

The design is extraordinary for 1903 to have building like this that stands.

There's no poles inside.

It's 150 foot across.

It's just an amazing structure, and being as unique and one of a kind that it is, we can't lose this building.

- Let's take a walk around so we can see some of the sides of this.

You mentioned that it's round and it has this span inside.

It looks like it might be what, 18 or 20 sides to this building?

- There's 20 sides to the building, and it has a beautiful stage.

It's huge.

It's been used constantly since the Chautauqua days in the early 1900s.

- And you use it for, actually there's a theater of course, but I guess for music and also probably reenactments maybe of Chautauquas past?

Is it ever used for those kinds of things?

- It has been used like that, not recently, but we have festivals here in the park and this is kind of the centerpiece of those festivals.

It's been used for our Victorian light festival.

It's been used for our Scarecrow Daze in the fall.

Our 4th of July celebrations are held here, centered in this park, and everything kind of operates around this building.

We've had musical groups here where they've performed for audiences free of charge to the public, and it's something that this town cannot replace.

It's the biggest structure in the county, and it's gonna take a lot of time and effort to save it, but it's doable.

- You know, we look at it and you did say how it was designed.

Back before there was air conditioning, you could see that there's these sort of garage doors.

They fold up into the walls.

- [Wayne] They lift right up.

- [Mark] They lift up, and I guess the windows at the top open up so you get a good air flow in there.

- [Wayne] Hot air rises, goes up through the clerestory windows and it evacuates there.

- Well, it is something.

You know, what I want to do next, I want to go inside, because I have a feeling that the inside of that dome up there is gonna look similar to a barn or a cathedral, 'cause it's all wood, isn't it?

- Yes, it's a 100% wood structure, and it's amazing that they were able to do this.

I've been in modern buildings today where you walk into the building and the structure on the inside is exactly like this, except they're made out of steel, and this building has steel in it and part of the support system, but it's primarily a wood structure.

It's just amazing that they were able to do this.

- Well, let's go on inside.

- Okay.

- [Mark] Mark Atteberry, we get a good chance to see a wide view of the inside of this building now, and it's amazing.

150 feet across.

This is a big space.

- Absolutely, and the good thing about this as an auditorium is you have no supports that obstruct your view clear to the stage, but we do have a lot of challenges here.

- Yeah, you do.

I don't know much about architecture.

You do 'cause you're a trained architect, but that would have been, would that have been revolutionary at that time to have a dome like this without pillars?

- I would tend to think so.

I mean, to have something that is a clear span of 150 feet built in 1903 is pretty amazing, in my opinion.

- The inside of the structure, as we look at it now, it's got a gravel floor.

It's got the benches in here.

This is very much the way it would have looked in the early 1900s.

- We've done some modifications over the year with electricity and things like that and some of the overhead doors, but essentially what you see when you come into this building today is basically the way it was when it was originally built.

- Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could get this thing up to code and back restored the way it was and then be able to actually reproduce Chautauqua events here?

Wouldn't that be cool?

- That's our goal.

That's our goal.

- It really would.

You'd have a history lesson that people would come all over the country to attend.

- I'm sure Wayne mentioned, there were actually two Chautauquas here, and this one is really the only remaining original structure that's left of that era.

- You've got your work cut out for you, though.

The reason you formed this committee is because this old babe needs some help, and you can point out to us.

I mean, it's not that hard to see if you stand on the floor here exactly what you need to do.

Why don't you show us some of the problem areas?

- [Mark A.]

Well, you can see as part of this truss over here, the top cord of the section where the clerestory is is actually bowed because that section is in compression now, and so that's one of the areas that we're gonna have to take and replace that section.

- [Mark] That's probably not the only one either, is it?

- [Mark A.]

No, there's actually a few of those.

You even have some of these vertical members here that are originally, they're in compression, and they're starting to show some signs of overloading, so our goal is to try and stabilize the structure.

That's really part of phase one of this project.

- Let's stay up there for a minute.

As we look at these steel supports, these turnbuckle, were these original to the design?

They keep the stress on the outside of the roof, I guess, don't they?

- [Mark A.]

Correct.

Much of what you see here is original.

There was a section of the building that actually was replaced in the 70s because part of the roof collapsed from a snow load, so some of the turnbuckles have been changed, but a lot of what you see here is original structure.

- And we mentioned this earlier, too.

As you look at the upper circle where you see windows that are along there, that helps to ventilate the place, but you can see up there there are places where they've all been broken out.

I imagine it's not as simple as just replacing them, because probably the wood that's holding them in there probably has to be replaced as well.

- That's correct.

When you board up a window, obviously you're trying to keep any kind of weather out, any rain, that sort of thing.

But if the windows are left open for any certain amount of time and you have water getting in, it's gonna degrade the jambs and the sills, and so a lot of that framing around those windows is gonna have to be replaced before you can put windows back in there.

That's part of our phase one as well, to make sure that we get all of the windows and the doors, repair any of the siding that's on the outside so that basically you have a weather tight building.

- [Mark] We just had a good look at the stage.

That's presenium stage that we were looking at.

That was here originally, wasn't it?

- [Mark A.]

Yes.

- [Mark] And that's where Carrie Nation and President Taft and all the people that we're gonna talk about in this program who came here, that's from where they would have spoken to this group.

- [Mark A.]

Absolutely.

I mean, you can almost imagine standing here, seeing some of these people from back in that era.

- [Mark] How many people could have crammed into this place on a hot summer night?

It's not much fun to think about, is it?

- [Mark A.]

It's estimated that you could fit 5,000 people in here.

I think that would be a pretty crowded space.

Comfortably though, I think you could easily get 3,000 plus.

- This would have been the thing to do in the county and maybe the whole central part of the state.

- If you think about it, until radio and television came along, this was your entertainment.

- We mentioned a little bit ago that the ceiling had fallen, the roof had fallen in because of snowfall.

In fact, we're standing right under the area that was repaired.

It looks like they did a pretty good job.

But the fact is when you replace these supports, you're probably gonna have to put a new roof on, aren't you?

- Absolutely, and that's figured into our first phase.

With the structural stuff, you're gonna have to take sections of the roof off in order to make sure you do it correctly.

Roof replacement is definitely part of our restoration.

- We talked about your architect.

You've got an architect over in Springfield who's helping you with this.

Has he given you a dollars and cents bid or estimate on what this is gonna cost?

- He essentially came up with six different phases totaling about a million seven, just a little over a million seven.

Of course, that's based on all labor being paid for and all materials being paid for at the going rate, basically.

- In Shelby County, you can probably find some people that are pretty handy that would probably want to help out.

- Yeah, and take in mind that the structural stuff is gonna take a contractor who has the expertise to do that, but replacing windows, replacing siding, painting, even concrete work, which we're talking about, trying to to replace this rock floor with concrete or some sort of stable surface like that, could all potentially be done with local tradesmen.

- [Mark] Well, it's ambitious, but it sure is a good project.

- [Mark A.]

Absolutely.

- June McCain, you're a retired teacher and lived around here most of your life.

In fact, you did a lot of research on this building because you're a member of the Shelby County Historical Society and Genealogical Society.

But also, you really have a love for this building and for this park.

Why?

- Well, it probably goes back into family history.

One of my grandfathers at Bethany, Illinois, WR Bone, was always, I don't know.

Maybe we don't say this anymore, but he was an egg head.

He was just always out trying to find something new.

He did work with the University of Illinois then.

He was always up.

Well, in fact, he got so involved in what the University of Illinois was doing that he helped import soy beans and helped get soy beans started in this part of the state.

So any place he could go to find something new and learn something new, he went.

So that's when my mother would tell about when he would come down.

She was the oldest girl, and she had three or four brothers and sisters younger than she, and the grandmother wasn't able to come because she had two or three little ones at home, that kind of thing.

So she would come.

She always told about the fact that they came here to the auditorium and one of them wanted to go to the bathroom.

So she got up and left to go to the bathroom and they didn't get in the right door.

She couldn't find where the rest of them were.

That's the kind of a story I was raised on, about what a crowd it was and what a building it was to get in and out of.

- [Mark] It was so crowded in the summertime that they couldn't even really find their way around.

- That's right.

A lot of our people watching this aren't familiar with what Chautauqua was, but back in the early 1900s, it was quite a movement.

- That's right.

It was a movement to get information out to people and things like that.

That's what I think today about how we just go from TV station to TV station because we want to keep up with things.

We want to know what's going on.

Well, back then they had to have the whole year to think about it, so then they'd plan on getting down here and seeing what the programs were, and the programs would be advertised.

It was a movement to educate people.

It really was.

- Before radio and TV, people could read a newspaper, but the news wasn't always very up to date in a lot of cases, and that wouldn't necessarily tell them what was going on in other parts of the country.

- That's what it amounted to.

- So in this place, let's say in the summer of 1905 or something, what's an example of the kind of people that would come through here to speak to the crowds?

- There's one that I've always kinda been interested in.

People were really interested in psychology and the mind, even then, and we've got a machine up there that somebody had invented to test the waves of people's brains, to see how they were reacting.

This Jasper Douthit, who had had this Chautauqua out at Lithia Springs, he was just interested in all kinds of things that even today we don't think about.

I look at that machine and think, how on Earth did they wire people up to that?

- Introducing all new technologies to people.

- Any kind of a technology.

Anything from a technology, I guess you say down to any kind of entertainment.

- I mentioned earlier and I heard this from one of the other folks here that President Taft came here one year.

Carrie Nation.

- 100 years ago this year.

- And she was the one of course that was the temperance leader who came here, I guess.

Billy Sunday, the preacher, was he here as well?

What kind of crowds could these people draw?

- I don't know.

Just anything that anybody was interested.

Maybe they would just plan on seeing some of their family they hadn't seen for a year, even that kind of thing.

- Just a chance to get together, a big reunion.

- And then you'd see a lot of people here in Shelbyville.

I don't know whether I put a map, I don't think I put a map in that folder, where there were cabins that was built all around this building and people would come out here and stay for two weeks at a time.

Maybe then they'd come out all summer and just stay on the weekends or something, just a place to get out of downtown when it was hot, where they'd get out here to get some country air I guess at that time.

It drew people that were just, just a life change, I guess, a lifestyle.

- When you were a little girl, there was more going on here than just this auditorium.

There was a lot of activity in the park.

In fact, I think you mentioned that they had horse races.

- Horse races, that's right.

- What do you remember about that?

- You want me to tell the story about the man and getting hurt?

- I thought it was pretty interesting.

- There was a big grandstand where you could watch the races just right off there to the southeast.

I can remember watching the horses come around.

They were sulky races.

This man just, I don't know, dad always said he was drunk, didn't know what he was doing, but maybe he wasn't, maybe he was excited about somebody in one of the races he liked.

I don't know what it was really, but anyway, the horse ran over him.

He didn't die that day, but he did die the next day.

I had grown up with that, and as I have said, told you a while ago that my family never believed that I could remember that.

But when I got to doing this research, I found the article in the newspaper.

I can't even think what the man's name was.

- You were exonerated, weren't you?

How old were you then that you might remember that?

- Well, it had to be, I was born in 1919, so this had to be in '23 or '24.

So I was only about four or five.

- Good memory.

- Yeah.

It was just something that always impressed me, that it was a disaster, I guess.

- Yeah.

- I felt bad about it too, I guess.

- Hey, one last question.

Why do you think it's important to keep this place here and keep it in good repair?

- Oh, I think it's just a symbol of what went on in society.

Shelbyville was always, I don't know what you would say, a progressive group of people.

From the very beginning, it was a lot of people that wanted the best of everything, I guess you would say.

I think that this was one of the things that's the emblem of society, of what Shelbyville was like, of the people that were educated, people that were interested in society, and it was just an answer to that.

I just think this, well then of course, when you do the history of it, there's not very many buildings like this.

I've always been really interested in architecture.

You know, you can't help but observe a lot of that.

There's more architecture here.

We have this difficulty of people thinking that local people can go in and do the work, but they can't.

They don't understand it.

There's just not very many of us that understand the cantilever architecture method.

So I don't know, I think that's one of the things.

It an architectural thing that ought to be on the, I don't know what you would say.

They ought to be bringing kids down from University of Illinois to study the architecture of this.

- Not a bad idea, not a bad idea.

- Maybe they don't know about it, I don't know.

- [Mark] Liz Schafer, you're on this preservation committee, and of course, you're not an old person, so you don't remember this when it was in its heyday, but you really appreciate older things, don't you?

- Yes, I do.

- [Mark] In fact, you live in an old family home here in Shelbyville.

Why did you make that choice?

- It's just something that I've always valued, something that my parents valued and my grandparents.

The only way people continue to live after they've passed is in the memories of those who loved them, and the things they leave behind remind us of them and keep us remembering them.

I have things in my family home that belonged to my great-great grandparents.

It's a way to keep them alive for me and for my children.

I've just always been fascinated by that, how things can outlive their owners and still tell stories about their owners.

- You've done some research on this building and uncovered some of the artistry that was involved in this, and it was showplace at one time.

If we look up at the presenium stage here at the very top, you can see the statue of the three muses, which of course would inspire the theater in this place.

But you know a little bit about the artist that made this, and what doesn't exist today, what's no longer with us.

- Robert Root was someone who was well known in his day, but perhaps somewhat underappreciated by his town.

In fact, just a couple of years ago they did an expose of his existing works at Milliken, which was quite wonderful and well attended.

I would say virtually every piece that was there was something that someone from Shelbyville had in their family, and it was possibly something that a relative had commissioned or had purchased and been passed down.

When this was initially done, he had done as I understand it all of the backgrounds, the scenery panels that were there decorating the stage, not to say they wouldn't change scenery appropriately for a given play or something, but there was a fountain that would cool the people in here, because obviously air conditioning wasn't something they had.

It was clearly something that he valued as a community member and that he was someone whose work they valued and were quite proud of.

It's just kind of sad that's all that's left is the muses.

I shutter to think if that section of the roof caved in or something, that would literally be gone forever.

It's not something that could withstand that kind of a blow.

- His scenery isn't here anymore, but backstage, there's some other interesting stuff.

I want to go back there with you and take a little walk through, okay?

Liz, I wonder how many feet trod this stage over the last hundred years?

- A lot.

- The reason I wanted you to bring me back here is because I wanted people to get a sense of what it was like back here.

Of course, these would not have been the original sets.

Like you said, these would have been beautiful artwork.

But back in these dressing rooms and back in these little areas, there's some priceless stuff, because for all those years there've been these groups of people that perform here sometimes with the Chautauqua, sometimes in independent things after that, but they leave their signature and the years they were here.

Doesn't that make you feel good that you can come back here and kind of see who's been here?

- I kind of wish that I had seen some of these performers.

- Now we're looking at the Sholle Family Orchestra I think is what we're looking at, and you can see they're from Cleveland, Ohio.

They came in here in 1921 and then also '22, also 1923 and 1926.

I don't know if that was the last year they came or not, but that's just an example of the kind of things that you find here.

Here's one from 1928.

Look at this one, the Gallagher Dogs.

That would've probably been the dog show.

- [Liz] The dog circus.

- [Mark] The dog circus that everybody talks about.

And the Chicago Ladies Sax Band, August 17th, 1921.

They scrawled that in pencil, and it's still there.

- [Liz] Yes, I think that's because people respect the building and they haven't wanted to deface it.

It is part of the history that everyone appreciates.

- [Mark] Well Liz, thanks.

- [Liz] Thank you.

- Roy Shuff, this park gets used a lot, but unfortunately this old building, because of the condition it's in, can't get used a lot, but the city council really wants to change that.

In fact, they named this committee didn't they, to look into this and to pursue this.

- Yes, that is true.

We appointed this committee in 2008.

We had a two year timeframe that we wanted to see some progress being made here, and the committee is off and running.

They've already got some contributions, they've got some pledges.

It's going very well, and we want this to be used like it once was.

- [Mark] Now that would be just in the summertime, or would there be an opportunity to use this thing throughout the year?

Give me an idea of what sort of events might take place here.

- We're hoping that we could use it throughout the year, and one event would be in the fall.

We have what is called the Scarecrow Daze celebration here in town.

We could use it for that.

We could use it during the summer.

We can use it during the winter for possibly some revivals and concerts.

There's a lot of things that we could use the building for.

The committee that we've appointed for the restoration, we're going to also have a sub committee that will kind of take and get events planned.

- Mr. Mayor, thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Thanks for bringing us out here and making it available to us.

And also, don't be surprised if you hear in the next two years that there's an old style Chautauqua being held here, maybe in cooperation with Pana and Taylorville, because those sites have expressed an interest in bringing back the Chautauqua as well.

With another Illinois Story in Shelbyville, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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