Hey all,
I think I’m going to rephrase this question and post the new version of it in IMHO. Watch for the new topic. 
Old theaters. The current Brady Theater, Tulsa, OK was built in 1914 and served as the Tulsa Convention Center. Seating originally was 4200, now 2800. Appropriate old-timey interior, stage, backstage, altered rooms, hidden passageways, drop floors [making up the last two].
And history - from wiki
When the facility officially opened, it was billed as the largest hall between Kansas City and Houston, Texas.[3] Another source claims it was one of only 16 theaters in the U. S. equipped to host a full Metropolitan Opera production.[4]
According to a local legend, the building is haunted by the ghost of Enrico Caruso, who performed there in 1920 and reportedly caught the cold that led to his death of pleurisy in 1921.:eek:
Because of its size and proximity to Greenwood the building was used temporarily to detain black men rounded up by the National Guard during the 1921 Race Riot.[2]:o
If you want to get out of town and rusticate a bit, one of the go-to sources for creepy old buildings out in the country has been mental hospitals built on the Kirkbride Plan:
So: Large and designed for isolation, with lots of room to roam and get lost, especially if you’re going Full Gothic and the building itself has gone insane and is trying to kill you.
It gets better:
If you don’t know, ‘Victorian’ means ‘creepy’ in general, doubly so for large, institutional Victorian buildings.
And, yes, a lot of them were simply abandoned when mental health care moved patients out of large mental hospitals and [del]onto the streets[/del] into community mental health services.
This place comes to mind.
I saw that page too, but I don’t think that’s the same building. It’s certainly not Georgian, it wasn’t built in 1917, the name is slightly different, and that book I linked says the building I mentioned was demolished in 1998.
Could be. I know nothing about Portland. But the book has so many pages chopped out that it’s not at all clear that the same building is being talked about at the end.
It still doesn’t seem to be in downtown, but since people are now volunteering every building in the country that is the least of it. Tulsa, OK?
I don’t think anyone ever found the other thread… so here’s what happened. Anyway, I really think that this belongs in GQ rather than IMHO, which is where it was started.
My characters informed me that… um, I mean that I decided that an old house makes much more sense than anything that would have been used as a convention center. I’m talking to the head of the architecture dept. at PSU this week. But I really still could use information from the incredibly smart people here. Also, I think that’ll help me to pin down the kinds of questions I want to ask the PSU dept. head.
What I need to know is the feasibility of a number of fictional constructs. This house is French Renaissance style (like a much smaller Pittock Mansion) and is right next to the downtown Portland library. It’s been falling into decrepitude for years, but funding for its basic upkeep has been coming from a mysterious source. Now it’s about to be torn down. The historical preservation commission is furious, but they can’t do anything about it; the house is privately owned. And yes, the story is that it’s haunted.
Sophia (main character) found out about an opportunity to be paid for photography of the house before the demolition. She applied but was turned down. Her cousin Caleb graduated from the PSU architecture program and is now an intern for the preservation commission; together, they try to figure out the mystery of the house and its sinister inhabitant. (Then, the NC-17 content begins. But that’s another thing…)
Is there anything in this setup that seems more/less believable? (Has anyone ever heard of these kinds of scenarios… what would happen if a private individual wanted to tear down a historic building they owned; is it against any law… is it plausible that a private individual would run a preservation fund and would be able to have a paid intern… that kind of thing.) What might be some good questions to ask the head of the dept? And pretty much anything else that people want to share!
Why can’t the landmarks commission prevent demolition? Since the mid-1970s (and the Penn Central decision in 1978) most progressive cities have had landmark ordinances that forbid demolition of listed structures unless the owner can prove serious hardship. A beloved mansion next to the Multnomah County Library would be one of the first properties listed.
Yeah, that’s one of the questions… in this scenario, the landmarks commission is TRYING to stop it, and there’s controversy, but the owner is acting like nothing will stop him from going ahead with it. If it helps to know that the house is actually a portal to another world and that’s where the owner came from, well, that’s the situation. But nobody in our world knows that part, so that’s why the entire thing has to be based in reality as far as how people would actually behave if it happened.
I can’t speak to Portland, but generally it’s more complicated than that. In many cities landmark status protects the exterior appearance of a building, but that’s about it. Interiors can be changed and buildings can be demolished.
Rochester has an extremely strong Landmark Society and plenty of protections built into the city process. Yet it seems likely that a developer will be able to tear down a landmark church, despite yet another appeal to the City Zoning Board. The Zoning Board has restrictions on its rulings; it can only rule on whether the process was properly followed, not on any intrinsic value of the building.
Similarly, a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix was purchased by people who intended to demolish it, only to seek a buyer when they hit a storm of protest. (A deal has since fallen through and the house is up in the air.)
It is very difficult to force an owner to maintain a property against his wishes, even when historic preservation issues are present. The circumstances depend on the details on local law, the restrictions if any placed when the building was purchased, safety issues from a dangerous structure, and whose money is involved.
Anise, those may be issues you want to discuss with the professor.
Thanks so much for the info! In this case, the owner is the mysterious heir of a very wealthy family. So there’s no public money involved with that house. I’ve wondered what effect it might have that it’s right next to the library, though.
A private house in the architecture you specifically desire is much more believable. In Portland, OR, you could have the original owner an eccentric with scads of money from shipping or lumber. To complicate your story, let the original owner, or the last known heir be unmarried and childless with no will, and that would force the search of a relative SOMEWHERE.
As for the threat of demolition, the disrepair, structural defects, and as an elegant touch, extensive termite damage could create a building that must be torn down as a hazard. Existing fire damage is another factor that could force a demolition.
~VOW
I like it! 
In this case, though, the heir wants to tear it down because it’s a portal to another world-- one that he wants to keep closed. He’s PRETENDING that it has to be torn down… actually, it doesn’t. So it’s very useful to know which problems would really require demolition and which wouldn’t.
Many older houses have been added onto over time. One place my company renovated had a couple of stairways (probably rear entrances to the upper floor) enclosed between walls. They now went [del]to a portal[/del] nowhere. Also you could add a large dumbwaiter from the kitchen to second floor ballroom like this place had. Of course, it also goes to the basement if a secret lever stop is moved by the owner.
If it has to be a convention hall, I’d say it should look a lot like this. But personally, I’d go for the more Tim Burtonesque Brutalistish architecture, in BIG concrete. The difference between myself and Downtown is that you should take out the low ceilings and chairs and closets except as touches here and there, in favor of huge empty, echoey spaces with a lot of blocky squared off concrete everywhere. Perhaps some non blocky concrete but only for passageways (perhaps even swooping, elevated, concrete passageways, to get from one level to another.)
It’s a convention hall and convention halls are big. Un-naturally big. Their entrances are made for giants.
I’d recommend the Javits Convention Center in lower Manhattan, which looks like a big black modernist ziggurat (there are Gozer worshippers up in the UWS, I’ve heard) and is totally stands out in comparison with the rest of the area. (Check the wiki on it to see what I mean.)
I think the idea of a haunted convention center is brilliant — here is a horror setting for our age. I think this “gothic and gargoyles” malarkey is a step backward. Ho hum, gothic and gargoyles, just the same kind of thing in a billion horror stories already gone before…
Don’t compromise the freshness of the convention center idea by being beholden to some worn out clichés. Invent new standards for horror settings: like the Javits Center.
Yeah, Mid-Century Modern is old enough that it can be abandoned and creepy as well. How about something like the 1962 Better Living Centre at Exhibition Place in Toronto? Think… The real-life BLC was built in the bright optimism of the early Sixties. We were all going to live a better life in a sunlit world of Science and Progress. But what if, somewhere, it all went wrong, and the place has been abandoned for years, betraying the dreams of its builders…
A haunted convention center where the ghosts are forced to listen to boring speeches while sitting on uncomfortable folding chairs while eating rubber chicken or stringy beef, wilted salads, stale rolls, and drinking cold coffee or tepid iced tea.
Brilliant!
~VOW
If it doesn’t have to be in a city, it could be a Evil Overlord’s Secret Lair—err, I mean an abandoned Bulgarian monument.
It’s possible that there could be an irregularity in the paperwork establishing the house as a historic property or including the parcel in a historic district.