Concertgoers walking the red carpet into downtown Medford’s Holly Theatre Thursday will not feel as if they’re entering the past. Although the century-old movie palace benefits from a $13 million restoration, the newly reopened venue was designed for today.

Then and now, it’s the largest indoor theater in southern Oregon. The quality stage, sound and seating for an audience of 1,008 make it attractive to performers traveling between Portland and San Francisco.

At 8 p.m. Thursday, The Piano Guys quartet will take over the expanded stage, fusing classical, pop, film scores and original music with comedy against a backdrop of cinematic videos.

At 7:30 p.m. Friday, longtime Rogue Valley resident, supporter and showman Jim Belushi unites with the 10-member Sacred Hearts band to perform Chicago-style rhythm and blues.

The 1930 Holly Theatre, optimistically built during the Great Depression then condemned a half-century later as cable TV and video stores kept viewers at home, is making a dramatic comeback.

The timing is right. The renaissance of old movie palaces is on the rise as cities see the economic value and enhanced civic pride of revitalizing downtowns. In 2020 , preservation organization Restore Oregon added historic theaters as a category of threatened resources to be supported.

And it’s paying off.

The restored, upgraded and seismically reinforced Holly Theatre, once at risk of being pancaked to make way for a parking lot, is expected to contribute an estimated $3.25 million annually to the local economy, said Holly general manager Tiffany Maude.

The Holly Theater was purchased in 2011 by the nonprofit JPR Foundation , which also operates the 1935 Art Deco Cascade Theatre in Redding, California.

The foundation, with the support of the Medford Urban Renewal Agency, immediately embarked on the task of repairing the four-story Spanish Colonial Revival building.

For 13 years, artisans, contractors, fundraising volunteers and nearly 3,300 community donors dedicated to expanding arts and cultural opportunities in the region persevered through challenges and setbacks.

They also benefited from fortunate surprises, especially that almost all of the original materials, from inch-thick Douglas fir floors to rosette-shaped chandeliers, had survived.

Many supporters will gather at Thursday’s pre-concert gala.

“It’s emotional being here,” said restoration committee co-chair Karen Doolen on Tuesday while standing under the auditorium’s dreamy ceiling painted with a Venetian canal motif. “We realize the legacy we’re leaving.”

Ron McUne, also a restoration committee co-chair, was in awe alongside Doolen. By the time he saw movies at the Holly Theatre, many of its historic features were concealed under flimsy layers of modernization.

Once dismissed as relics, “these beautiful old theaters are catalysts that draw people downtown,” said McUne. “We’re honoring the past but we’re forward thinking and want everyone to enjoy this.”

Saving the Holly

Original Holly owner Louis Niedermeyer and investors launched their splashy splurge to build a modern theater-business building days after the stock market crashed in 1929.

In the end, the cost of construction, furnishings and equipment was $150,000 .

The concrete structure sat prominently at the corner of North Holly and West Sixth streets, between the Home Telephone Company and the federal building.

A contract was signed to show only films produced by the Warner Brothers Vitaphone company.

Ensuring there was enough revenue to support the “deluxe theater” in good and bad times, Holly owners asked architect Frank Chamberlain Clark to include rentable commercial spaces.

There were four storefronts next to the main theater entrance. Five offices were on the second mezzanine floor and more offices were tucked into the third level.

The projection room and theater offices were on the fourth floor, according to architect Mark McKechnie of Oregon Architecture in Medford, who designed the renovation to meet current building and accessibility requirements.

Ashland-based historic preservation consultant George Kramer advised on the restoration to adhere to standards set by the National Park Service for structures, like the Holly Theatre, listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The original owners added contingency plans for the auditorium as well. If experimental talking movies failed to capture audiences, pipe organ wells in side walls could be used to add the instrument to accompany silent films.

Audiences, however, eventually embraced Technicolor and Surround Sound, and the wall openings, then and now, are boarded and painted to look like windows or postcard scenes of Crater Lake and Mount McLoughlin.

To save money, artisans faux finished walls, ceilings and columns to imitate pricey ornamentation. Decorative features hand-painted then were repainted during the renovation by Timothy Leslie of Maranatha Painting in Grants Pass.

A remnant found of the carpet with a “water weave” pattern laid in the lobby and auditorium paved the way for it to be duplicated.

And Homasote soundproof fiberboard , introduced a century ago and still made from recycled paper, was used again.

The vintage steel seat frames were salvaged from a long-gone theater, but the plush blue cushions are new. Kept in place: wide legroom and aisle spacing of yesteryear.

Modern theater

In the 1930s, Medford had a population of 11,000 and a handful of fancy theaters. Today, Medford has a population of 85,000 and until the Holly reopened after being closed for almost 40 years, only the nearby 750-seat Craterian Theater was still operating.

The original Craterian, built in 1924 and also designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by Clark, is owned by the not-for-profit Craterian Performances.

The Holly was considered to be the classiest of Medford’s venues, providing the best service and experience for customers, and offering good films in English and Spanish, and a wide variety of entertainment.

From the start, the Holly was a modern performance hall with stadium seating, clear sight lines to the stage, and no balcony, gallery or box seats interrupting the connection between the audience and performers.

Six backstage dressing rooms were used by vaudeville to classical performers.

In March 1940, contralto and Black civil rights activist Marian Anderson , who was denied performing in the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall in segregated Washington, D.C., a year earlier, stood on the Holly stage and faced the audience of 1,200 people, about 10% of Medford’s population at the time.

Anderson’s only appearance in Medford is a story John Snider, the third co-chair of the theater’s restoration committee, likes to tell.

Over the years, Snider has helped lead more than 8,000 people on a tour through the theater, past the lobby’s hand-stamped plaster walls and the former smoking room to the expansive auditorium and seldom-seen backstage.

The affable Snider, 81, jokes that he was a teenager dumped by a girl at the Holly, but later he enjoyed first kisses and an engagement acceptance.

And although he has never encountered the two ghosts rumored to haunt the building, he quotes the League of Historic American Theatres that if there isn’t a ghost story, one should be created.

Snider, like Restore Oregon and other champions of historic theaters, see these main street landmarks as cherished community spaces that, if saved, can continue to hold meaning, memories and history.

“When you walk into the auditorium now,” he said, “you will have the same visual and feeling as people had on opening night in 1930.”

He calls the Holly “the people’s theater.” And he invites everyone to take a bow.

Then and now, the Holly Theatre has set the stage for the future.

Tickets to Thursday and Friday’s opening performances are available up until showtime at hollytheatre.org or the Holly box office, 226 W. Sixth St.

— Janet Eastman covers design and trends. Reach her at 503-294-4072, and follow her on X @janeteastman .