Staring at the terra cotta facade of the Mayfair Theater, with its graceful female statues and intricate relief work, Sean MacCarthy is amazed it has survived so much turbulence in the century since it went up.
The rest of the historic building on Howard Street has not fared nearly as well. The inside was remodeled again and again, the arched windows were filled with masonry, the mosaic floors were torn up. And, in the final indignity, the roof collapsed in 1998, leaving a two-story-high pile of debris that has not been cleared to this day.
But more than 20 years after the Mayfair stopped showing movies, MacCarthy sees new life for a theater left for dead. His development company has won exclusive negotiating rights with Baltimore to purchase and renovate the building. MacCarthy has been leading teams of architects and engineers through the wreckage, drafting plans for a revival.
"It's a dream job," MacCarthy says, "because there are so many challenges."
He says he hopes to convert the building into ground-floor retail with four stories of apartments or condos above that, while preserving the facade and the first 15 feet of the interior. The rehabilitation of the Mayfair, in the 500 block of N. Howard St., is central to a plan for injecting life into the upper west side of downtown, where several apartment buildings have opened but the sidewalks are mostly empty.
Once MacCarthy's team determines how much renovating the Mayfair will cost, and whether it's financially feasible, he will make an offer to the city and negotiate a purchase price. If he succeeds in turning the place into stores and apartments, it will be only the latest incarnation of a building that has had many lives since first opening as a natatorium in 1880.
It was a Turkish bath for a while, an indoor ice skating rink (one of only six in the world in 1894), a concert hall complete with a roof garden, a theater for live entertainment and a movie palace. In 1929, Spencer Tracy performed in the play Excess Baggage in the theater and was paid $300 a week, according to Robert K. Headley's book Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore.
Originally called the Auditorium Theater, it was billed as one of the finest in the city, if not the country. The ceiling and walls were frescoed in Byzantine and Renaissance styles. The "cardinal-throned proscenium boxes," according to an 1890s newspaper account, were embellished in bronze. And a Hungarian orchestra played in the palm garden during intermissions.
The theater seated 2,000 and, with 30 exits, could be evacuated in five minutes, the owners claimed.
But few have walked through its doors in recent years. The name was changed to the Mayfair Theater in 1941, and it showed movies until 1986, when the rise of the suburban multiplex and the decline of Howard Street spelled its demise.
On a stairway landing in the building last week, MacCarthy pointed out a huge, rusty lamp house that was mounted behind the projector to light the films, "Special 70" embossed on its side. At least one restroom was intact, barely -- gray paint chipping from its wooden door, the stall so small it seemed suitable only for schoolchildren.
It was safe to venture only in the front part of each of the building's five floors; beyond that, collapsed trusses and ceilings filled the seating bowl.
"I wouldn't go too far," MacCarthy warned a visitor who took a step onto the rickety floor of the balcony. "I almost killed myself a month ago."
The first challenge in the renovation will be stabilizing the exterior walls, which since the roof came down have carried the pressure of trusses and timber leaning against them. When all that debris is cleared out, the worry is that the 2-foot-wide walls -- with no stabilization at the top -- could collapse.
In 2001, developer Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc. proposed turning the Mayfair and two adjacent buildings into 47 apartments at a cost of $7 million. But that plan was derailed. Struever Bros. did not return a call for comment.
Now project architect Curt Schaefer of Kann Partners said he is using historic photographs to determine the building's original appearance. The lobby, for instance, is covered in peeling yellow wallpaper from the 1970s. That will have to go.
"Generally what we try to do is peel everything back to whatever original materials are still remaining and then try and reconstruct from that point," Schaefer said. So what is now a one-story lobby will probably be opened up to a grander, two-story lobby if evidence shows that was the original construction, as Schaefer suspects.
Indeed, the 1890s newspaper report mentions a "circular balustrade opening in the ceiling which gives one an upward glance at the balcony promenade and conversazione."
The Mayfair marquee that extends over Howard Street will likely be removed because it was added well after the building's construction and obstructs some of the finer features of the facade, Schaefer said. Behind the marquee are the two statues of robed female figures (both sadly headless at this point) and an arch where light bulbs were set into flowering terra cotta.
As MacCarthy, 30, inspected the facade from above the marquee, two men on the street called out to him. "Are you renovating this building?" one shouted up. MacCarthy said he was and went down to the meet them.
On the street, the men -- brothers Wayne and Austin Barry -- said their great-grandfather owned the hotel next door, which MacCarthy is also renovating, and that their grandfather managed from 1915 to 1923.
Called the New Academy Hotel, actors and actresses of modest means stayed there. (The better-off stayed at the ritzier Congress Hotel behind the theater.) The New Academy was also used by farmers who came to town with their produce, because it was one of the few with stables.
"This was the theater district of Baltimore," said Austin Barry, 58, of Sykesville. "It's gone neglected for so long. It would be great to see it revitalized."
Inside the theater, a bit of orange fabric hung on the front of what remains of the stage. High on the walls, alabaster stone marked the pitch pockets where the trusses crossed overhead. And in the balcony, faded hunks of sculpted columns hinted at better days.
stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com