ORANGE — The Town Hall Restoration Committee is hoping to raise $7,500 for the 1912 Concord Minuteman curtain used throughout most of the last century in the auditorium.
Committee member Maureen Riendeau said the committee has already received more than $3,000 in donations needed for the restoration. She said the group has been meeting since January to discuss how to proceed with the project.
Riendeau said so far many of the responses have been from individuals who remember the curtain from when they were young and lived in town.
“The reaction from the community has been wonderful… we’ve gotten a lot of small responses, which is what we thought we would get,” she said. “I have had checks sent from Germany, from Kansas, from Colorado, from California – people from all over have been sending their checks.”
The stage curtain was made in 1912 and depicts the Minuteman Statue residing in Concord.
Riendeau said Christine Hadsel, a surveyor for Curtains Without Borders, an organization that specializes in assisting towns with their repairs of historic painted curtains, has been contacted to lead the restoration effort.
According to the Curtains Without Borders’ website, many of these painted curtains were created between 1890 and 1940 and are found in town halls, Grange halls, theaters and opera houses.
Part of the funding, said Riendeau, will go toward hiring a licensed rigger to hang the curtain in Town Hall when the restoration is complete. She said the committee hopes the cleaning and restoration will be started in late September or early October. The committee plans to have a ceremony to celebrate the restoration when finished, she said.
“A century ago, in Grange halls, town halls and performance buildings, theater curtains were the central pieces of public art in small towns across New England. From the late 1800s to the eve of World War II, they formed the colorful backdrops and scene setters for weddings and concerts, plays and town meetings,” said Ian Aldrich, deputy editor of Yankee Magazine, in a 2016 Yankee Magazine article titled “Each One is Worth Saving.”
For those looking to donate, Riendeau said to send checks to the Orange Town Hall, to any committee member or by going to the town’s website.