Bringing back the Howard

The Howard. Just mention the legendary theater in a room full of Washingtonians old enough to remember the place in its heyday and listen. Everyone has a story.

For decades, the Howard Theatre was a mecca for black entertainers such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, James Brown, the Supremes, the Drifters. Then the lights went out.

It’s been years since the theater went dark, mired in blight, a victim of urban decay amid the District’s now thriving U Street corridor.

That seems about to change.

After a series of false starts spanning two decades, restoration of the vintage venue could become a reality — but not before the theater’s centennial celebration.

The historic theater will turn 100 years old in August. Curtains will remain closed for its centennial celebration, but not much longer, said Roy “Chip” Ellis, chief executive of Ellis Development Group, the D.C. developer charged with restoring the structure.

“The theater will not be open in 2010, but we are planning a gala-style celebration in 2010 which can also serve as a fundraiser,” he said, adding that a grand reopening is scheduled for 2011.

Before the Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Regal in Baltimore or a host of other black playhouses that later would be dubbed the “Chitlin Circuit,” there was the Howard, an imposing sight with its neoclassical facade and statue of Apollo playing his lyre atop the building.

Blacks who were not allowed in the District’s white venues during segregation could sit in the majestic Howard on Sixth and T streets Northwest and bask in the grandeur of the 12,000-square-foot theater, its baroque interior, 1,200 seats and eight balcony boxes.

“In the ‘50s, you were not allowed to go downtown to the white theaters. So if you don’t have anything to compare it to, the Howard Theatre was the greatest thing you’ve ever seen,” said Lawrence Berry, 68, a longtime promoter and producer for local recording artists. “I started going to the Howard Theatre around ‘51. I saw all the greats come through at one time or another.”

The theater, named after nearby Howard University, also welcomed white patrons. An article in the New York Age newspaper, written five days after the theater’s opening night on Aug. 22, 1910, said the venue was “the finest and most beautiful playhouse erected,… a theatre where the color line is unknown and where all are cordially welcome.”

In 2007, when Mr. Ellis won a city contract to restore the shuttered theater, excitement ran high. The city, which assumed ownership of the building in 1986, provided Mr. Ellis with $8 million in hopes that the theater — along with a planned $100 million headquarters for Radio One Inc. that Mr. Ellis is developing in the same area — would spur significant economic growth.

Mr. Ellis and Radio One Chief Executive Alfred C. Liggins III kicked off a fundraising campaign for the theater in February 2008, shortly after winning the contract. Mr. Ellis estimated he needed $22 million to get the job done.

Two years later, after talks of yet another restoration effort began, Howard Theatre Restoration Inc., the organization working in conjunction with Ellis Development to raise the money, has secured just $1.6 million.

“We signed a lease with the city around [November] last year,” Mr. Ellis said, noting that it is difficult to raise funds without any formal ownership of a venue. “I would say that raising $1.6 million isn’t bad in the worst economy since the Great Depression.”

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