To those who know it well, it’s hard to consider Liberty Hall simply a building. From the weathered plateaus of the wooden floor to the signature celestial artwork of its vaulted ceiling to the way the foyer is bathed in light as the sun sets over Lawrence, the venue’s warmth and character come through even when empty. The walls have heard the performances and orations of thousands. The stage has played host to one of the most important days in people’s lives, their wedding days. Over the years, paint, plaster, sheetrock and brick rose and fell, weathered and burned. The face of Liberty Hall has changed many times over its lifetime, but few know the whole story.

Walking around Liberty Hall, Rob Fitzgerald sees history. He walks past the wooden baseboards he nailed into place, by the doorframes he erected, over the marble floor he uncovered, and underneath the massive mural on the ceiling he watched unfold brushstroke by brushstroke. He looks at it all and nods at the landmark he helped build.

“There’s such a good feeling here,” he says.

Fitzgerald should know. For 14 of the past 22 years, he’s worked in some capacity at Liberty Hall. He started as a video store clerk and projectionist in early 1987 and joined the remodeling crew that stripped the building down to its bare bones. Now the Hall’s technical manager, Fitzgerald has come to love the building for what it means to him as well as what it means to Lawrence.

Starting a History

Liberty Hall was born of a fire. In 1856, the offices of The Herald of Freedom, the first pro-abolition newspaper to print in Kansas, burned to the ground, leaving only a charred shell on the northeast corner of Seventh and Massachusetts streets. The lot remained empty until Samuel Edwin Poole built the first incarnation of Liberty Hall later that year.

The Hall became a lightning rod for many events in eastern Kansas and Lawrence: public debates, speeches, as well as town hall meetings. It wasn’t until J.D. Bowersock converted the building into an opera house in 1882 that it took on the theater design it’s known for today. From actual opera productions to performances by famous Vaudeville acts such as Al Jolson, the stage at the (renamed) Bowersock Opera House became home for the arts in Lawrence. It even played host to performances by notable citizens such as Forrest “Phog” Allen, who participated in the local Elk’s Club’s fundraising minstrel shows.

The biggest interruption in the Bowersock Opera House’s 48-year run occurred in 1911 when the building burned to the ground. The building had to be completely redesigned and rebuilt. A similar setback came on September 20, 1886, when a fire ignited on the theatre’s stage. However, instead of completely rebuilding the stage, contractors simply covered the remains with fresh wood. Strolling over the weathered floorboards of the current stage, Fitzgerald points to the cross-section revealed by a stairwell descending into the basement.

“You can still see where they built on top of the old stage,” he says.

After the opera house went bankrupt and ran aground in 1930, the changing faces of the building became all the more apparent: from a Dickinson movie theater to the Jayhawker Theatre to a disco during the ’70s to a punk rock club and even a short stint as a storage warehouse for the Hallmark company. Eventually, the building fell into obscurity.

Resurrecting the Legend

Then, in 1985, a rebirth. More than 100 years after a fire torched The Herald of Freedom, David Millstein, Susan Millstein and the late Charlie Oldfather bought Liberty Hall at a sheriff’s sale to restore Liberty Hall to its former glory. Susan remembers walking into the building for the first time.

“It was a wreck,” she says. “I remember walking up to where the bar is now and there was a piano sitting there with a shriveled cake on top of it. It hadn’t been touched in a year.”

Then, the rebuilding began. Fitzgerald was there for all of it. As part of the motley renovation crew, he helped to tear Liberty Hall apart from the bottom up. The crew replaced most everything from sheetrock to pipes to flooring. They laid palazzo-style tiling and tore down the black panels that covered the walls. And though Millstein was not there day to day, she watched the progress for months.

“It was a ‘strip it down and build it back up’ kind of job,” she says. “It went from that total dark, void of life, to just lighting up.”

Fitzgerald says that the rebuild was a trying experience, but that the team was easy to motivate.

“It was a labor of love,” he says.

But even in the rebuilding phase, the crew couldn’t escape the building’s history. While working to repair and update the video store bathroom, they discovered the stairwell blacks used to enter the theatre before it was fully integrated. For Susan, letting go of the Hall’s storied past wasn’t an option.

“It’s a beautiful, historical community venue,” she says. “It carries that history with it, but it can be anything.”

From the 30 or so weddings it hosts each year to the local events, such as the Victor Continental Show, to art house films, Liberty Hall has become a focal point for Lawrence culture and changes its face with every event. This concentration has even bled into KU life. The KU Law School’s Pub Night has taken place in the Hall for the past 15 years. The event, a fundraiser to support Women in Law programs, includes silent and live auctions as well as performances by students and professors.

“It’s been a great venue,” says professor Richard Levy. Levy’s band, The Moody Bluebooks, is a cover band composed of members of the law school faculty. Taking the stage under the lights at Liberty Hall, he says, is a surreal experience.

“We felt like rock stars.”

For Fitzgerald, it’s the combination of the venue’s mystiques and the talents of musicians that really affect him.

“I’ve been brought to tears by many artists,” he says, noting that it was a performance by punk rockers The Descendants he saw during college that tops the list of his favorites.

Flash animation by Sean Rosner

Taking the Stage

Something Susan and Fitzgerald keep hearing is how much artists love playing in their house. After a recent concert, Joan Baez approached Susan to tell her how much she enjoyed playing in such an intimate venue.

It was a reserved seating concert, Susan notes, which Liberty Hall seldom schedules. But Baez just said how much she loved playing in such a cozy place.

Alternative band Guster welcomed a fan onstage that wrote them an e-mail, requesting to play violin in homage to one of the venue’s muses. Decades ago, a show by political rockers Rage Against the Machine saw concertgoers stage diving from the lip of the balcony. Though the staff never encourages such activities, the question stands: Why do people love playing here so much?

“The question’s answered by standing in the spot,” Fitzgerald says, looking out across the empty house from a perch on the stage.

Back in her office, Susan says that, unlike musicians, she prefers to sit in the balcony completely alone, soaking in the atmosphere as much as she can. But as much as she loves sitting in the back, Susan is quick to remind herself how close it all came to never happening.

“It just couldn’t have been done without the Oldfathers,” she says. “Thanks to Charlie, financing was covered.”

Over the years, of course, common wear and tear necessitated fresh coats of paint or new equipment. The owners recently installed a new sound system to accommodate the needs of moviegoers and concert attendees. Some might see these alterations as an attempt to give Liberty Hall a facelift. For Susan, however, the reasoning goes deeper.

“We brought it back into use for the whole community,” she says. “Our hope is to fortify the building so that we’ll leave it better than we found it.”