The ceiling project at Cumston Hall, where the Theater at Monmouth performs, is slated to be done by the end of February.
Revealing past splendor
Sometimes upside-down, Tony Castro is working to return Monmouth’s grand theater to its original beauty.
MONMOUTH – It takes a moment. Faded lines appear from the pale background. A little longer and bits of clouds and the ghosts of birds emerge.
A century ago, the ceiling of Cumston Hall’s theater resembled the summer sky. Puffy clouds and doves complemented the three murals above the ornate stage. In them, comedy and tragedy were personified as women surrounded by cherubs.
“We have enough evidence to know what it was like,” said artist Tony Castro, standing on a wooden platform beneath the dome-like ceiling. From there, he could reach up, touch the plaster and trace the lines left by long-dead artisans.
His hope is to return the theater to the way it once looked, before age, dust and seeping moisture turned this sky to storm-cloud gray.
Castro’s work is one piece of a $2.1 million expansion and renovation of Cumston Hall. Much of it is done. The library is finished. New heating and air conditioning systems have been installed. There is a new elevator, and new ramps and sprinklers.
Yet the building is much the same as it was when multi-talented artist Harry Cochrane designed it for Dr. Charles Cumston. The building, which opened in 1900, has been on the National Register of Historic Buildings since 1976.
In fact, it was Cochrane who painted the room and the canvas murals, and designed a ceiling renovation in 1934, when he was 74 years old.
“He was a Renaissance man,” said David Greenham, producing director for the Theater at Monmouth, which performs in Cumston Hall.
Cochrane also wrote a two-volume history of Monmouth, said Greenham. And when Castro needed pre-1934 photos to see the theater then, they found glass plate pictures that Cochrane, also a photographer, had taken.
The pictures show long-faded stencil work that surrounded the theater and even a hand-painted curtain that continued the murals’ theme.
For Castro, these are necessary clues for a restoration. He has led restorations at the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center in Livermore, at Bowdoin College’s chapel and at many area churches and halls.
At Cumston Hall, the Maine native had attended plays and was once hired to do a small repair. Its beauty overwhelmed him, he said.
“Over the years, I thought that if there was ever a restoration here, I’d want to be part of it,” Castro said.
Working on the ceiling
Castro’s company was hired last fall and began work in December.
He and his crew – Ben Wynn, Colin Sullivan-Stevens, Jan Sampson and his daughter, Alpha Castro – began by cleaning patches of paint. It was both easy and hard. The 1934 paint was water-soluble and washed off. But it was delicate. The original 1900 paint was similarly washable.
Beneath the simple apple blossom stencils, they found roses, birds and clouds.
The crew, sometimes upside down, scrubbed, studied and sampled.
After unveiling the original designs and colors, they began painting a plain primer coat throughout the theater. On top of that will be a reproduction of the original art.
Much of their work will be done on a platform while looking straight up.
On past projects, Castro managed the ceiling work by wearing a kind of back brace. On one job he tried a loose collar, like the ones worn by whiplash victims.
Eventually, he decided he would simply have to endure the upside-down work.
The payoff will be in the completed restoration, he said.
The ceiling project is slated to be done by the end of February. He plans to return next winter to restore the first floor area.
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