Not a Bad Seat in the House: The Balconies

The old Balcony at the Georgia Theatre was always an interesting place to be during a show. It was actually the third & fourth level of the old building in its earliest days. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, it looks like the original entrance was on Clayton Street from pictures, facing south. The marquee and Lumpkin street entrance on the east side must have been added much later. I don't think the balcony was part of the original building and was only added sometime in the late '40s, early '50s possibly. I really couldn't find out. Again this is one of those backstories that may or may not be true, as the actual evidence is hard to pin down. I was always told by several people, the balcony was the remnant of that era of segregation, Jim Crow shit in other words. It was the "other" entrance. Again, just a story that I have nothing but hearsay to support. But it's truly ironic in the end because if any part of that is true, the balcony of the old GATH was where the party was at! Considered by many to be the best seats in the house actually. HA!

Before the fire, the balcony could hold maybe a hundred people safely, that's just my opinion, but the shows were often very crowded. At peak capacity shows, I shudder to think how many people crammed in that area. The crowd would get to dancing really intensely and the whole balcony would move up and down several inches! Once again, I've heard this in multiple venues in my travels; "The balcony or the dance floor is built so it "floats" in order to dampen the harmonic motion of groups of people moving in synchronization." I don't know if that's true or not, but that balcony moved in a significantly noticeable way, it was pretty alarming when people started boogyin' hard!

There were two very small bathrooms that only partially worked at the very top of the balcony, and in the upper rear corner was a bar. A little teeny tiny little bar. Brian Crane (RIP) would have to shut the balcony bar down when he ran out of beer. He would then go all the way down to the olde basement where the keg manifold was and carry a full keg up 4 flights of stairs through the crowd on the jammed stairways heaving that thing through the crowd. A 15-1/2 gallon keg of beer weighs about 125Lbs, and they are a serious bitch to hold on to when they are cold and wet from condensation, and slippery. Brian was a savage!

Many wood finishing pieces and much of the custom serpentine wood bar at the top of the upper balcony were constructed from the salvaged main roof beams. Many other areas with wood trim and all the picture/poster frames throughout utilized the same recovered wood. Those old beams were huge and produced a lot of material. Hand-hewn at the turn of the 20th century by men with horse-carts and hand tools only. It was an awesome way to tie the history of the place to its modern reconstruction.

The local craftsmen who did all that custom recovery and installation of the wood did an absolutely beautiful job. The stained glass windows on the doors and elsewhere were all rebuilt. Old wood and anything that could be salvaged and reused was, and it turned out fantastic.