It was the pride of the community when it first opened on East Main Street in 1912. The Daily Progress called the 1,000-seat theater with the elegant plasterwork by French sculptor Victor Pierret “a real playhouse” with “a corker” of a stage. “The policy of the management will be to run high class vaudeville and moving pictures afternoons and evenings, except when theatrical productions are booked,” the paper reported.

In its early years, the magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, the slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges, and the fire and brimstone evangelist Reverend Billy Sunday trod the boards. More recently it was a cheap seat, second-run movie house, where hits like “Forrest Gump” might play for weeks on end. And now, three years and $7.5 million after closing for renovations, the Jefferson Theater is a rock-and-roll venue, a state-of-the-art facility whose burnished wooden floors and sleek modern lines set off its elegant moldings and bas reliefs to gorgeous effect.

History

The first local theater with the most ubiquitous name in town was the Jefferson Auditorium on West Main. Completed in 1896, it burned down in 1907. After years of fruitless efforts to attract investments from outside the community for a replacement theater, a group of local businessmen put up $40,000 and transformed the Jefferson National Bank into a “playhouse” grander than any the city had ever seen.

The steeply raked main floor held seating for 650, the two balconies for 300, and boxes along the side walls held 50 more. The stage was 36 feet deep and 52 feet wide, “amply large to accommodate any of the big attractions of the road.” The proscenium arch, with grapevine and oak leaf detailing, was 28 feet wide and 26 feet high. The side walls of the auditorium were comprised of red panels trimmed in sage green. The walls and the buff-colored ceiling were decorated in ivory and gold leaf, while the balconies had reeded details.

Two large and three small dressing rooms under the stage accommodated stars and accompanying performers. A heating and ventilating system “of the most modern type” could purportedly pump fresh air into the auditorium in only 12 minutes.

The new Jefferson opened on October 12, 1912 with a production of the Broadway hit “The Man from Home,” starring William Hodge and the original New York cast. In return for a cash guarantee twice the size ever offered in Charlottesville, Hodge and Co. gave the sort of performance the audience had really hoped to hear. “Aside from the inability to hear or understand a single word of the opening act, the play last evening was far above any reasonable criticism,” the Progress wrote, apparently without irony. But the beautiful new theater, “one of the handsomest and most comfortable auditoriums in the south,” was the real star of the show, and the evening was a resounding . . . er, great success.

Just 16 months later, the theater’s management caused an uproar by booking a vaudeville revue starring Evelyn Nesbitt, renowned as “the most sensationally beautiful girl on Broadway.” University of Virginia students and church leaders objected “in the name of public morals and public decency.” But were they scandalized, or did they just revere the memory of Stanford White, the celebrated architect who had built several halls at the University of Virginia and rebuilt the Rotunda? Nesbitt had been at the center of a national scandal in 1906 when her jealous husband, later declared insane, had shot and killed White, a notorious playboy. Whatever the cause of their protests, the show was canceled.

More shows were canceled in January of 1915 after a smoker inadvertently ignited a fire in the Jefferson’s balcony, destroying two surrounding blocks, but not the theaters’ stage. Just four months later, the theater reopened. In 1930, U.Va. students barged into the theater, protesting the 75-cent charge for movie tickets. The price was reduced to 50 cents.

Over time, as vaudeville went out of style and “talkies” replaced silent films, movies became the theater’s main fare. In 1969 it was purchased by four Charlottesville business partners, who changed the name to the Cinema Theater and reduced the number of main floor seats to 550, adding another 18 inches of leg room between each seat. The Cinema Theater became the discount Movie Palace in 1983, when the mezzanine was blocked off from the main floor and different films were shown in each space. This policy was continued when Hawes Spencer, editor of The Hook, purchased the theater in 1992 and restored its original name.

Charlottesville native Alison Kern has fond memories of the theater’s second-run, cheap seat days: “I thought it was gorgeous,” she says today. “I liked going in there because it was almost like going into a cave. It was real dark and really close and small and intimate, and it was a neat place to go. You kind of felt kind of unobtrusive, not like a big theater where there are masses and masses of people. You could walk in and almost sit by yourself. It was a neat movie experience, I thought.”

“When I first started going there you could see it was a beautiful building,” Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society director Peg O’Bryant says, though she remembers it as “kind of dingy and well-worn. The seats were a little bit lumpy because they were old, but hey, were perfectly O.K. There was that old joke that when you went your feet would stick to the floor, but you could see that it was a beautiful structure. I can imagine when it first opened people were just awed about how it appeared.”

Renovations

Almost a century later, folks are not so easily awed, but the refurbished theater is a dazzler.

Dave Matthews Band manager and music and real estate mogul Coran Capshaw purchased the building from Spencer in 2006, and Charlottesville Pavilion general manager Kirby Hutto oversaw the renovations, adding restrooms, installing new sound, lighting, and heating and air-conditioning systems, and tweaking the acoustics. Best of all, along with replastering as needed to recreate the original work and laying down new wooden flooring in the auditorium, Capshaw and Hutto have opened up the space, allowing the handsome lobby bas reliefs and auditorium plasterwork to shine.

The once down-at-the-heels lobby, no longer encumbered by a ticket booth-turned-candy counter, is crowned by a dark-purple ceiling with a dramatically lit dome – it’s the old heating and cooling grate fitted with a color changer. The grey and white diamond floor tile and the few old, cracked vinyl theater chairs on the sides are a nice retro touch, but right away, as Hutto says, “you start to get the feeling that you’re going into more of a rock-and-roll venue.”

Once inside the auditorium doors, the surprise is to find oneself in a lounge--with a sleek bar, tables and chairs--extending out over the steeply raked main floor. Staircases lead down to that handsome new floor. With the old low ceiling from the time when the balcony was closed off gone, and the long-sealed-off second balcony open, the whole space has a grandeur it hasn’t possessed in decades. You walk in, and you’re ready for a show.

In addition to the bar on the main level, patrons can imbibe in a bar in the newly opened downstairs, or in tiered, café-style seating in the second balcony. Hutto hopes to eventually add video capacity, so that patrons can watch the show from the basement bar. Concertgoers can also bring in food from the casual Mexican restaurant–still unnamed--in the old Innisfree World Artisan space adjacent to and accessible from the theater. The restaurant is open until 2 a.m. on show nights.

The new Jefferson is booking a mixture of national and local acts. Ninety percent of shows, Hutto says, will be standing room only on the main floor. Upcoming acts include Donna the Buffalo on February 4, Amos Lee on February 6, Trey Anastasio on February 8, the North Mississippi All Stars on February 21, and Drive by Truckers on February 26 & 27. For a complete list of shows, visit the Jefferson Theater Web site: www.jeffersontheater.com.