‘A place to gather and experience’

With great purpose and attention to every minuscule detail, a group of people gathered together several years ago with the goal of restoring Greenfield’s 1896 opera house.

The vision was that it would be a place where community could happen, where people from anywhere could gather to experience the arts and other inspiring events.

In 1995 Greenfield native Yvonne Schildberg purchased the vacant building and gifted it to Chamber/Main Street, and a committee was formed. The building was transferred to the newly formed 501(c)3, E. E. Warren Opera House Association in 2001.

“We did a feasibility study, and I think the tuck pointing was the first actual restoration piece we did,” said Nancy Queck recently, at a gathering of people who were key to the restoration of the building. A structural integrity study and roof work were also done about that time.

A second chance

Before any of this work began, a group formed in the late 1970s tried to do what wouldn’t be accomplished until over three decades later. Ed Sidey, Jay Howe and others were a part of this effort. While the work didn’t come to fruition, they were able to get the building on the National Register of Historic Places, which would prove beneficial to those who would come later.

“The other thing I find interesting about that is they thought it wasn’t feasible — it wasn’t financially feasible,” said Phil Cannon. “It just wasn’t going to work for them. I feel like for that roadblock to have happened before, and for us to go on from there and get done what’s been done, that adds to the story. Getting it on the National Register of Historical Places was huge. It could’ve been a deterrent if it couldn’t be done [before].”

“That was one less hurdle we had to face, because it was on the Register,” Queck said.Catherine Olesen also feels that the fact that the building was put on the National Registry gave testimony to the community interest in the building being restored, it just wasn’t feasible then.

Queck speculates that a factor to the project getting off the ground in 1995 was that it had sat vacant for a few years, where it still housed a store on the main floor in the late 1970s with the first group.

Bleak beginnings

The building needed a lot of work.

A tarp adorned the floor in one portion of the auditorium upstairs because water leaked through and the ceiling had fallen in at some points. Discarded clothing displays from a clothing store that was once downstairs littered the floor of the auditorium and there were signs that many pigeons had been in residence.

“The street level floor wasn’t in that bad of shape. It had kind of been in use, so it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, but it was better,” Queck said.

A dump truck was borrowed to remove debris from the building. With no elevator, volunteers made countless trips up and down steps of all levels of the building from the basement to the attic.

Dan Dickinson’s children basically grew up in the opera house during its restoration, Cannon said. They made 20 donation boxes in which they sought out donations from the community to help fund the effort to restore the historical structure.

“Every penny counted,” Olesen said.

Dickinson’s younger daughter, Danielle, married fellow Nodaway Valley High School graduate Kyle Thaden in the building’s turret during the COVID-19 pandemic and a drive-by reception followed on the Public Square. Dickinson’s older daughter, Michelle, had her wedding reception in the building, following a wedding at Greenfield United Methodist Church.

“Since they were little, they had hard hats on and were carrying stuff out of here, so that’s probably why they wanted to get married here,” Dickinson said. “I would give tours and they would say ‘Dad, you forgot to say...’. And that was before any of this was done.”

Community support

The group that gathered to reminisce, upon this 10-year anniversary of the restoration’s completion, remembered that when they were hoping to begin restoration of the opera house, several key community projects were also on the docket in Greenfield, including the new 4-H building, fitness center and a renovation project at the hospital. Olesen recalls meeting with then-Mayor Bob Guikema about all of these projects that were vastly different but equally as important to the community.

“I recall having this little meeting in this little closet [at Greenfield Lumber]. Dick Reis from FNB, Bob and someone from Union State Bank would have been there, and we talked about all these projects and how it could all happen,” Olesen said. “We all decided you can’t do it all at once. No project will win. It was then that there was this decision of who would go, and we really held back to be last. I think there’s a lot to that, in terms of the collaboration and working together.”

Once they felt it was their turn to go, Olesen went to work writing grants and was an integral part of securing many streams of funding for the Warren Cultural Center.

There are two sides to everything, and that includes what people thought of the opera house being restored.

“It depends who you talked to,” Cannon said. “There was the whole gamut of emotions. Some people thought it was a huge waste of money. Others were very excited about it.”

Queck said she always asked people what they would want in the space on the east side of the Public Square if the opera house wasn’t there.

“If we didn’t save this building it would just be a huge hole on the square,” Queck said. “Demolition alone would’ve cost a fortune.”

The restoration

The group working to restore the opera house into what is now the WCC were required to keep the same 1896 floor plan the building always had due to the use of Federal and State Historic tax credits. They were also required to restore the paint scheme.

That paint scheme includes the detailed stenciling in the auditorium space that now hosts meetings, concerts and many community events. That stenciling, completed by the same contractor that does work at the Iowa State Capitol Building, took over 1,200 hours to complete.

“They had a process where they could take off the layers of paint, so they were able to see a piece of the pattern here, then they had to piece it together because you couldn’t get a whole string [of the original pattern in the wall],” Queck said.

The group jokes that when the restoration was complete, they thought their work was done. But it wasn’t.

“It was a relief and we were proud that we had accomplished it,” Queck said.

“It was really a gala event,” Olesen said.

On the opening night, the stairs weren’t finished yet, but visitors could enjoy a meal and live music to celebrate the completion of the restoration. Key community people and professionals who were involved in the restoration of the building were introduced to the public.

“We had to set a day, then construction didn’t quite keep up,” Queck said. “The stairs weren’t done and a few other things weren’t complete yet.”

Not just an opera house

While the group working on restoration of the opera house visited opera houses in Elkader, Pella and other locations before embarking on this season of Greenfield’s history, they have long desired that the building be “not just an opera house.”

Iowa opera singer Simon Estes, film producer Norman Lear and numerous political dignitaries have visited the Warren Cultural Center since it opened. The facility has hosted concerts, arts classes, weddings, three Nodaway Valley proms, political candidate forums and many other things.

Visiting entertainers are impressed by the beauty and acoustics of the venue. The group that gathered recently hopes it can continue serving all of the purposes it has for the community and region for many years to come.

The WCC’s workforce is all volunteer currently. Its current board consists of Melissa Schwartz, president; Thaddeus Hawley, vice president; Dickinson, secretary; Queck, treasurer; Michael Miller, Ryan Stonebraker and Craig Plymesser.

“We want people to have unique experiences here, or ones they’re really going to remember and ones that improve their quality of life,” Olesen said. “We really envisioned it to be a place where everyone would want to come to gather and experience. I think there’s a ways to go for that, but I think it’s still a very appropriate goal.”