Calling all with construction skills, willing hands and happy hearts to join in the new siding project at the Walden’s Ridge Civic League. Volunteers are needed to help us pull off the old, deteriorated shingles and install new white-oak board and batten.
Organization meeting is Saturday, May 10, at 9 a.m. Meet at the Auditorium, 2501 Fairmount Pike, across from Wayside Presbyterian in Walden. No need to bring tools at this point. We are developing strategies, forming teams, and setting schedules. Contact Mark Dwyer, president, at (423) 618-3060 or [email protected] for details.
All can help. Skilled craftsmen are key, and we welcome your experience. However, if you can wield a rake or fix a sandwich, we need you too. Putting a proper covering on the dear old building is going to be like an old-fashioned barn raising. Men, women and children will play a part.
The Auditorium was built by the local people in 1921 and is still in use today. However, it is showing its age at 104 years old. The community theater was the idea of the Fairmount School Improvement League and served as a meeting place for all residents of the ridgetop before the Towns of Signal Mountain and Walden were organized.
The original siding was heart-pine board and batten put up by mountain carpenters. Unable to afford similar materials when the need arose in the 1960s, less expensive fiberboard shakes were chosen to sheath the exterior walls. Sun and other forces of weather have taken their toll. Woodpeckers have drilled holes, and birds and squirrels have taken advantage of the pathways into the attic. As a matter of fact, repairs and carpentry work will not begin until the baby birds nesting there have fledged this spring.
In 2020, COVID threatened to put an end to the Civic League. The League was incorporated in 1929, but as government services expanded, core purposes for a “civic league” shrank. In 1979, the Mountain Opry began using the Auditorium stage to offer free bluegrass concerts, and the theater became famous for the music played there. For 40 years, Mountain Opry rent covered the bills until COVID prevented the bands and the audiences from coming together, and the Mountain. Opry shut down.
Who would pay for utilities and insurance? What would happen to the historic building?
Four women, Elizabeth Akins, Rita Smith Irvin, Carolyn Longphre, and Karen Paul Stone, were determined to save the League itself, and with it, the Auditorium. Today the nonprofit community organization is under direction of a nine-person board of directors offering popular events and facilities for rent. To afford desperately-needed siding, they decided not to buy lumber but to seek out white oak logs to saw into boards. They created a drying kiln in the basement to season the lumber. Now it is ready to put on the walls, thanks to generous donations and hard work.
Rejuvenating the building is an opportunity for residents and friends to take part in saving the historic facility for another 100 years. Over the front door, a symbol recognizes the theater’s place on the Tennessee Music Heritage Trail. Soon the Walden’s Ridge Civic Center is expected to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Won’t we be proud to show off our building looking as good as it did in pictures 104 years ago?
The mission of the Walden’s Ridge Civic League is to preserve its history and to continue traditional and new activities.
Organization meeting is Saturday, May 10, at 9 a.m. Meet at the Auditorium, 2501 Fairmount Pike, across from Wayside Presbyterian in Walden. No need to bring tools at this point. We are developing strategies, forming teams, and setting schedules. Contact Mark Dwyer, president, at (423) 618-3060 or [email protected] for details.
All can help. Skilled craftsmen are key, and we welcome your experience. However, if you can wield a rake or fix a sandwich, we need you too. Putting a proper covering on the dear old building is going to be like an old-fashioned barn raising. Men, women and children will play a part.
The Auditorium was built by the local people in 1921 and is still in use today. However, it is showing its age at 104 years old. The community theater was the idea of the Fairmount School Improvement League and served as a meeting place for all residents of the ridgetop before the Towns of Signal Mountain and Walden were organized.
The original siding was heart-pine board and batten put up by mountain carpenters. Unable to afford similar materials when the need arose in the 1960s, less expensive fiberboard shakes were chosen to sheath the exterior walls. Sun and other forces of weather have taken their toll. Woodpeckers have drilled holes, and birds and squirrels have taken advantage of the pathways into the attic. As a matter of fact, repairs and carpentry work will not begin until the baby birds nesting there have fledged this spring.
In 2020, COVID threatened to put an end to the Civic League. The League was incorporated in 1929, but as government services expanded, core purposes for a “civic league” shrank. In 1979, the Mountain Opry began using the Auditorium stage to offer free bluegrass concerts, and the theater became famous for the music played there. For 40 years, Mountain Opry rent covered the bills until COVID prevented the bands and the audiences from coming together, and the Mountain. Opry shut down.
Who would pay for utilities and insurance? What would happen to the historic building?
Four women, Elizabeth Akins, Rita Smith Irvin, Carolyn Longphre, and Karen Paul Stone, were determined to save the League itself, and with it, the Auditorium. Today the nonprofit community organization is under direction of a nine-person board of directors offering popular events and facilities for rent. To afford desperately-needed siding, they decided not to buy lumber but to seek out white oak logs to saw into boards. They created a drying kiln in the basement to season the lumber. Now it is ready to put on the walls, thanks to generous donations and hard work.
Rejuvenating the building is an opportunity for residents and friends to take part in saving the historic facility for another 100 years. Over the front door, a symbol recognizes the theater’s place on the Tennessee Music Heritage Trail. Soon the Walden’s Ridge Civic Center is expected to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Won’t we be proud to show off our building looking as good as it did in pictures 104 years ago?
The mission of the Walden’s Ridge Civic League is to preserve its history and to continue traditional and new activities.
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