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Letter to the Editor> Murmurs for Mummers

Letter to the Editor> Murmurs for Mummers

[Editor’s Note: The following are reader-submitted responses to the editorial “Acceptable if not Noble” (AN 03_04.30.2014_SW), which considered the imminent demolition of John Johansen’s Mummer’s Theater in Oklahoma City and the renovation of Ulrich Franzen’s Alley Theatre in Houston. Opinions expressed in letters to the editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or sentiments of the newspaper. AN welcomes reader letters, which could appear in our regional print editions. To share your opinion, please email editor@archpaper.com. ]

There were local groups working hard to preserve and repurpose the Mummers Theater and conceptual plans put forth that incorporated the existing theater into a larger cultural and commercial mixed-use complex. My father supported and encouraged these efforts as an important and necessary evolution of this building, and architecture in general, to reinvent itself by adapting and embracing new ideas and technology.

The counterforce was money in the hands of opportunistic, short sighted men and women with too much power and too little imagination.

Christen Johansen
Rhode Island School of Design

Franzen would have added the fly loft. And zinc cladding does not exactly bring to mind corporate office buildings.

Craig Hunt

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