THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410270414
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
When you enter the Selden Arcade in downtown Norfolk from the Main Street side, you are treading where the immortals of the late 19th and early 20th century stage, musical world and lecture circuit trod. The spot is the site of the old Van Wyck's Academy of Music, hailed as ``the most elegant and costly temple of the muses in the entire south'' when it first opened on Sept. 20, 1880.
Until the erection of the old Colonial Theater on Tazewell Street in the early 1900s, the Academy was the area's headquarters for the finest in drama and music. It was also the areas's first theater to be lighted by electricity and its dazzling crystal central chandelier was justly famous.
Luxurious carpeting, richly textured velvet hangings, gilded carvings and a ceiling decorated with oversized portraits of Shakespeare, Racine, Beethoven, Goethe, Mozart, Haydn, Schiller and Mendellsohn gave the interior an additional touch of elegance. The Academy's spacious stage was also one of its chief attractions. Over the years it accommodated some of the biggest road shows, including ``Ben Hur,'' with its thrilling chariot race and Wagner's ``Parsifal.''
The original program for opening night was printed on cream colored satin and advertised a jolly little musical called ``Fun on the Pacific.'' Miss Carrie Walker, a Southern belle from Nashville - and a friend of H.D. Van Wyck, the proprietor - was brought in to speak the prologue. It challenged the Norfolk area bon ton (fashionable society) to make the new theater ``The pride and boast of all Columbia's land.''
During the next 30 years, such stars as Sarah Bernhardt, Lillian Russell, Ethel Barrymore, Paderewski, E.H. Southern, Julia Marlowe, Maude Adams, and Joseph Jefferson gave distinction to its stage. Oscar Wilde was perhaps the most exotic bird of passage to appear on the Academy's boards. He was there on the hot and humid night of July 10, 1882. Wilde, then on a tour of the United States aimed at converting the American public to the doctrine of art for art's sake, cut a fanciful figure that evening.
He was dressed in a black velvet ``fan tailed'' coat, a long black satin vest from which dangled an enormous gold fob, black satin knee breeches, dark silk stockings, black patent leather pumps and a waterfall of lace cascading form his shirtwaist and cuffs.
By the late 1920s, however, the Academy's palmy days were long past. The gilded carvings were tarnished, the velvet curtains were in tatters, and the portraits of the great on the ceiling gazed sadly down on a rat-infested auditorium that had been reduced to become a sleazy showcase for third rate movies.
On April 4, 1930, someone saw smoke curling from under the Academy's roof. An hour or so later, Van Wyck's former elegant Academy of Music was completely gutted by fire. The Selden Arcade was built on the site in 1931.
Among the spectators at the fire was Jimmie Montgomery, a veteran Norfolk stage manager, who listened sadly to the reminiscences of the old timers who gathered around him. One old fellow's memory was a bit off track, however, and this is how the Norfolk newspapers of the time reported it.
``Everything was going all right,'' said Mr. Montgomery, ``and I was about to tell one myself, when a gentleman in the back of the crowd spoke up.
` ``I shall never forget `the night I paid $7 for a seat in the peanut gallery of the old Academy. Yes, sir, I paid $7 to hear Sarah Bernhardt sing `Camille,' '' he said, his memory faulty.
``Well, sir, I thought it was about time for me to go. When they started the Divine Sarah to singing, I had to give up. I was afraid if I'd stayed there some fellow would have had Caruso doing a tight-rope act.'' ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
KIRN MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Van Wyck's Academy of Music preceded Selden Arcade on Main Street in
the late 19th century. Fire gutted it in 1930.
by CNB