Venerable but Worn Hauck Auditorium Getting Facelift, New Seats
Contact: Karen Cole, 581-4704, George Manlove, 581-3756
After 43 years, UMaine’s Hauck Auditorium is getting new seats and a facelift.
Built in 1962 as one of the state’s premier auditoriums where university and community music and theater groups could call home, and serving as a site for lectures, ceremonies and movies, Hauck opened with 600 plush seats and a deep red stage curtain.
Named after UMaine’s eighth president Arthur Hauck, who served from 1934-1958, the auditorium opened in an earlier and much different era for the University of Maine.
In 1962, the Memorial Union had a barbershop, bowling alley and billiard hall opposite the original Bear’s Den, where cherry-flavored Coke and grilled hot dogs attracted not only flat-topped college students, but community youth who enjoyed the facilities. Hauck Auditorium predated the mini-skirt and The Beatles’ first recording.
The stately auditorium was dedicated in October or 1963, two months after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and a month before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Hauck has since provided comfortable seats with small folding desktops for students, faculty, community members and visitors to the University of Maine.
They’ve served audiences at hundreds of concerts and theater productions, at least 10,000 classes. Hauck was billed in fund-raising publicity as “Maine’s Newest Dimension,” and the “cultural, educational and entertainment center of the campus community.”
The Hauck lobby has been a well-utilized gallery for university, community and traveling art exhibits, engineering project displays, occasional chamber ensemble performances and receptions over the years.
But 43 years of thousands of people plopping down into the original seats took a toll, says David Adkins, facility manager with the School of Performing Arts. More than 75 worn out seats have been discarded or disassembled for parts to repair the remaining seats, says Adkins. They became so old that replacement parts were unavailable.
“I think we ended up this year with maybe 510 actual usable seats,” he says. “With 500-600 students every day of the week in there, there was a lot of gum and writing on the desks, and things like that.”
The condition of the remaining seats also raised questions of late about the viability of Hauck as a venue for university functions. Hauck has “looked run down,” says Adkins, “and for orientation purposes, it wasn’t a good first impression for parents.”
Now, Hauck is getting new ergonomically designed seats, new carpeting and new paint inside and out. Crews have been working all summer and plan to finish by September.
The new seats will be a textured light and deep blue. The walls will be a similar bluish purple to match the seating and new carpeting will be a multi-colored mix of colors that will create a subtle bluish, stain-resistant floor for the auditorium. The new curtain will be cobalt blue.
There will be additional space in the hall to accommodate wheelchairs.
“I think the biggest thing or the best thing people will notice is it will be a new space, even though here are no architectural changes,” he says.
It also will speak to the university’s commitment to the performing arts, says Sandra Hardy, associate professor of theater in the School of Performing Arts, who is “exuberant” about the long-awaited renovations. “I think it will generate some pride in the really good theater that we have there,” she says.
Adkins notes that naming opportunities exist to help upgrade other areas of Hauck that were not included in the work done this summer, including lighting, sound, rigging and a box office. The brass plates naming donors for the original seats will be compiled on a special plaque, he says.
To help with the refurbishment of the auditorium, patrons can “purchase” a new Hauck Auditorium seat with their names on the back for a $500 donation. Checks can be made to the University of Maine with “Hauck seats” on the memo line, and sent to the Office of University Development at 101 College Ave., Orono, 04473.
A ceremony will be held in the fall, according to Adkins. It will be timed with the first theater department show, “Blithe Spirit,” opening Oct. 28.