Lyric Hall
827 Whalley Avenue
New Haven
When John Cavaliere ripped up Lyric Hall’s floors for renovations, he struck oil.
Motor oil, that is.
It “started wicking up” from the ground, Cavaliere told me over homemade pizza, tea, and cookies in Lyric Hall’s kitchenette. That’s because several iterations before Cavaliere’s eclectic takeover, Lyric Hall used to be an auto shop. Before that, it was a boarding stable for horses. And before that, it was an auditorium for silent films.
Now the theater and antique restoration studio has partnered with friends at Best Video to bring motion pictures back to the space, in ways both modern and old. When I walked in, Lyric Hall's new 4k projector was throwing a vibrant image on the screen, of Fritz Lang's 1945 film Scarlet Street. On the other side of the room was that device’s great-great-grandprojector, a vintage film projector as tall as a person. It's not quite functional yet, but the hope is it will be soon.
Cavaliere acquired the projector from a woman named Dottie in Durham, Connecticut. Her late husband was an opthalmologist; it seems he was interested not just in eyes but in what people could see with them. There was a whole room in the house dedicated to antique movie equipment, including the Holmes projector.
Cavaliere offered Dottie a number, and she was game. She even promised to arrive at the projector’s Lyric Hall debut with her girlfriends, all dressed in costume.
First, the theater's crew and their cinephile friends had to get the machine to hum; they gathered this past Thursday to get started on just that. After lunch, filmmaker Andreas Burgess popped open the projector’s casing to demonstrate the intricate workings of its metal innards.
I watched in real time as the small team gained confidence in their ability to get the vintage machine in working order. I learned that it was great news the projector did not use a “carbon arc,” a process that Burgess said was “super hot, super flammable, dangerous, and dirty.” The friends discussed whether an audio component existed, concluding that the projector most likely pre-dated the talkies.
Down in the building’s basement workshop, Cavaliere fired up a mechanical “rewinder” that came with the Holmes projector, quipping, “This is the original ‘Be kind, rewind.’” With an exciting, industrial level of sound, two axles spun rapidly, ready to rewind a used film reel back to its original state.
It was, Burgess noted, probably the first time anyone had used this rewinder in 30 years. I felt like I was in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab — it’s aliiive!
It was a feeling the Lyric Hall crew seemed familiar with. From their painting restorations to antique furniture repair to projects like the Holmes projector, the joy of rebirth was alive and well in the Whalley Avenue space.
Immediately after we saw the rewinder run, three sets of bespectacled eyes gathered around, inspecting its components. Elsewhere in the workshop, Lyric Hall's Andre Lopez was seated firmly at a 1760s-era Cuban mahogany table, reaching over to bring its details back to full glory. One floor up, restorer Violet Harlow was putting expert touches of color on a painting that had been through the wringer.
“It’s highly glorified recycling,” Cavaliere said of his line of work, shining the mahogany table with alcohol to get a preview for how deep its color would get after the final finish. The table is “no different than the projector,” he said. And no different from the building itself, which almost went to someone who planned to tear it down before Cavaliere stepped in. All of these structures were made with love and built to last.
Cavaliere, along with his fellow colleagues and friends, not only have an eye for these qualities; they recreate that kind of craftsmanship themselves in the shop.
Lyric Hall is interested in expertise from anyone who might be able to help them fix up their vintage Holmes projector. On the new 4k projector, you can catch the theater's upcoming screenings in collaboration with Best Video on Thursday, Jan. 15th (My Life as a Dog) and Tuesday, Jan. 20th (Twin Peaks Pilot Episode).
