Ritz Theater Restoration of Restroom Facilities

Parke Players, Inc
P.O. Box 254
Rockville, IN 47872
765-569-PLAY

Ritz Theater Restoration
new Restroom facilities

For the past eighty years, the public restroom facilities for the Ritz theater have been a point of considerable interest because they were woefully inadequate for an audience of even a modest size. They were located in the extreme southern corners of the auditorium with doors that actually opened into the room. Both were considered "one holers" but the men's room actually had a urinal along with its ordinary residential style commode. The lady's room was equipped with a single residential style commode. Both had a single sink and neither had hot water available during the last ten or fifteen years that they were in use. Parke Players annual Covered Bridge Festival melodrama have been the only events to routinely sell out in recent decades selling an average of 2000 seats during the ten day festival. One or two of the annual summer musical productions have had sold out shows since 1991. The melodrama attendees are 90% out of town visitors while the summer musical patrons are roughly 90% local citizens.

The theater seated 450 during the sellout melodrama years and the thousands of visitors that attended the productions were all but certainly shocked and appalled by the crude facilities during their first visit but most came to accept them as quaint and just another aspect of small town life. A full house attending a three act production would have to have extended intermissions to facilitate the considerable lines outside of the restrooms. The poorly equipped concession area didn't help either but the restroom lines were legendary.

The Ritz Theater operates as a cinema during the weeks of the year that there are no stage productions. The average size of a cinema audience is between thirty and eighty people with crowds swelling to two hundred plus when a block buster comes to town. Hometown movie goers seldom experienced the inconvenience presented by the size of the original restrooms for the most part and rarely complained about the facilities in general unless it was during the period of questionable housekeeping the building experienced in the mid 1990's.

Below you will find a tour of the restroom renovation from start to finish. The new facilities were opened to the public on Friday, October 10th 2003 for the first of nine days of Covered Bridge Festival entertainment.

Original 8'' x 8'' men's room.

Original 10'' x 10'' lady's room.

East room of the office space the day before the contractor arrived. The new
lady's room will occupy this area when the project is completed.

Interior of store front of the same office room. This will eventually become the cinema
office. The doors and windows will remain as they are in order to preserve the building's
exterior facade which remains much the same as it was in 1912.

The framing for the east wall of the lady's room begins after the room was stripped
of all original wall treatment.

The framing goes up.

A few days later. The lady's room is in the foreground and the men's room in in the
rear with the ladder. The utility room for the furnace and water heater is on the right.

Completed framing and insulating for lady's room back wall and utility room door.

The men's room in the same state. The utility room is just
on the other side of the back left corner.

Store front of the same office room. This will eventually become the cinema
office. The doors and windows will remain as they are in order to preserve the building's
exterior facade which remains much the same as it was in 1912.

View into men's vestibule from the men's room.

North wall of the men's room with water supply lines poking though the wall
Floor tile installation in the men's room.

Wall tile application under way.

Fixtures followed the next week.

The lady's room takes shape.

Four of the seven fixtures in the lady's room.

After a couple of days of stalling.

The finished lady's room.

Finished men's room viewed from the vestibule.

The new Unisex restroom for parents and couples requiring the
aid of a spouse. This facility is located in the space formerly
occupied by the original ladies room. The original men's room space
is now a housekeeping closet with a mop sink.