In one of the outside show boxes, where promotional posters used to be displayed, a city order to repair a broken window was posted.
“They’re out to get me,” McGinty said.
Location of the historic Takoma Theatre
He pointed out the framed posters hanging on the lobby walls. They were for some obscure, long-ago plays written by one Milton O. McGinty.
What is past is prologue?
“When I bought the place in 1983, I tried to turn it into a live stage theater,” said McGinty, who had made his money in contracting and real estate. “I did what this Neumann lady wants to do with the theater, except that it never worked.
“I wrote six plays, and other people brought plays [and other arts events] in. But I lost money. I’m more than $200,000 in the hole.”
McGinty said his accountant estimated that he’d lost $240,000 on the 516-seat theater between 1983 and 2006 — a period during which the most notable booking was comedian Chris Rock, whose edgy 1996 HBO special, “Bring the Pain,” was filmed there.
Fed up with losing money, McGinty finally pulled the plug on the place whose marquee used to say “The Historic Takoma Theatre.” He has since removed the word “historic” — perhaps a bit of wishful thinking, given the problems he’s had because of the building’s protected status.
Robert Sonderman, a longtime member of the District’s Historic Preservation Review Board, which has rejected several McGinty proposals, said he sympathizes with the owner’s situation.
“He’s looking for options; you can’t blame him for that,” Sonderman said. “But his options haven’t passed muster. It’s a difficult challenge for him. He’s in a neighborhood that’s very engaged in historic preservation, and they want to make sure that he comes up with something that fits with the character of the neighborhood. That’s just the way it operates.”
A tattered landmark
From the outside, the Takoma looks like an old, brick box.
But the classical revival theater has historical significance as one of the few surviving designs by John J. Zink, whose firm designed more than 200 movie houses. (Other survivors include the Uptown and the Atlas in Washington and the Senator in Baltimore.)
Showing the popular films of its day, along with newsreels and children’s cartoons, the 1920s theater was once a major neighborhood draw, especially during summers, when it provided cool relief from the heat before the advent of home air conditioning.
But as multiplexes took over the movie industry, the Takoma, like so many classic film houses, became increasingly irrelevant. One of the few times anybody took notice of the Takoma was in 1974, when it booked an infamous double feature: “Deep Throat” and “The Devil in Miss Jones.”
Four years later, with the Takoma’s owner threatening to close the theater, a group of concerned neighbors — including Neumann — organized the first Takoma Park Folk Festival as a save-the-theater fundraiser.
Neumann, who has lived four blocks from the Takoma for more than 30 years, was delighted when McGinty bought the old movie house and converted it into a stage theater.
“Mr. McGinty fixed it up, and we were so happy about that,” she said. She went to two of his plays, she said.
But when the theater failed to make money and McGinty applied for his first permit to raze the building in 2007, Neumann started the Takoma Theatre Conservancy and showed up at a historic preservation board hearing to thwart him.
She has since secured two major grants from the District to fund the conservancy’s efforts to transform the Takoma into a nonprofit.
This week, the conservancy will present several performances of “Let Freedom Ring: The Story of Marian Anderson,” a chamber opera whose librettist, Carolivia Herron, is the conservancy’s vice president. The performance Friday at the Washington Ethical Society will be a gala fundraiser for the conservancy.
“I will not be there,” McGinty said, unsurprisingly. He was standing at the back of his empty theater. The thought made him chuckle — until it didn’t.
“What irritates me the most is these people who say they’ll be hurt if this place is gone — they never came,” he said. “They never came until I said I want out. And now they want to come?”
He shook his head and walked out.
Curtain.
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