When he was an office worker in New York, Grand Street resident Eric Powers, 30, knew that line of work didn’t suit him.
When he moved to Jersey City five years ago, the South Hope, Maine, native said he felt restless and discontent with his facilities management job at a Japanese securities company in the World Financial Center. When he got a more fast-paced job as a broker at the midtown firm of Ladenburg Thalman, Powers still found himself unhappy, dissatisfied with being a cog in the monstrous Wall Street wheel of buying and selling.
“I’m the kind of person who needs to see things get done,” said Powers, who graduated Central Connecticut State University with a degree in sociology and criminal justice. “I’m too impatient to sit behind a desk all day.”
In 1999, Powers decided to bite the bullet and follow in his father’s footsteps by working in carpentry, and he formed E. Powers Contracting, a small construction business he operates out of his Paulus Hook apartment. He’s been seeing things get done in a big way ever since.
Powers was hired by developers Paul and Eric Silverman to fully restore the façades and interiors of their Majestic Theatre project on Grove Street, and he has been working for the past three months to recreate the theater’s lobby as it looked in the it’s heyday. The theater, built in 1907 by the Klein Amusement Company, stopped operations in the 1950s and has been vacant for more than 20 years.
“It’s a little bit overwhelming because it’s been abandoned for so long,” Powers said. “But there’s more of a reward, in a way, with a place like this,” Powers said. “It’s more challenging.”
Getting the job done
When Powers first glimpsed the Majestic Theatre lobby, he said he was taken aback at the level of deterioration into which the lobby had fallen. Exposure to the elements had caused severe damage to the building’s wood, plaster and iron features, and the integrity of the building’s interior structures were questionable.
“It was close to being destroyed,” Powers said. “Most developers wouldn’t have considered trying to fix what was there. They would’ve done something completely new or tried to recreate what was there using new materials. But Eric [Silverman] was concerned about preserving what was existing as much as possible.”
After surveying what was there and figuring out what was missing, Powers and his team tried to determine the best way to go about putting the lobby back together. They did this, he said, by looking at old photographs and postcards and deciphering what elements belonged where.
“A lot of the wrought-iron rails were in other parts of the building, and you sort of had to take clues from other objects that were in better condition,” Powers said. “By looking at a stair post in another part of the theater, we thought, ‘If it looked like that here, then it might have looked like this [on the staircase]. It was working with the clues you had.”
Beginning with the lobby ceiling and its corresponding plasterwork, Powers removed the elements that were salvageable and sent casts of them to a Pennsylvania-based plaster company for reproduction. After retrofitting the building with steel reinforcements to support the aging wood and supplying the building with a new electrical system, Powers refaced the interior to achieve its early 19th century look. He did this, he said, by having the white oak sawn in quarters to maximize its historical authenticity.
The detail work on the interior plaster molding, featuring the winged female figures positioned in the spandrels between the arches, soon followed.
When the work reached down to the lower spaces, Powers’ attention was directed to more pressing contracting concerns.
“The first thing we had to do was repair the structure of the staircase,” Powers said. “The structure had failed. The underpinnings of the staircase were in disrepair. We had to take out all the rotten stuff and replace it with newer wood.”
Although the flow of the space has been changed, Eric Silverman wanted to retain the lobby’s original appearance as much as possible. The staircase to the theater’s balcony, for instance, remains where it originally was, but it stops abruptly at a wall. Even though it no longer serves the function for which it was created, the staircase – by virtue of its original existence in the lobby – remains.
The Silvermans hope to have the lobby completed by mid- to late January, Powers said.
A better builder
Aside from fine-tuning his historic preservation skills, his work throughout the building has allowed Powers a firsthand look at how building techniques have changed in the last century. Although contemporary builders have access to a slew of high-tech tools that enable them to do a more accurate and efficient job, examining how skilled tradesmen plied their trade one hundred years ago helps Powers be a better contractor today.
“It gives you a better understanding of the way people had to work then,” Powers said. “There was more of an abundance of skilled labor back then. People seemed to have more pride in the things they did, and there were more factors involved. Today, you don’t have that kind of skilled labor force. People seemed to take more pride in the work they did, [and its] higher quality. Much of the etiquette carpenters had 100 years ago has been lost today. I wonder if people 100 years from now will find any value in preserving much of what we build today.”
Added Powers, “I’ve always wanted to see the things I do done well, and it just reiterates the fact that it’s worth doing it right because it’ll last 100 years.”
Through his work restoring other historic structures, Powers said he has learned that flexibility is pivotal in making any restoration project successful.
“Here, you get to try a lot of new techniques because you’re constantly trying to make things work,” he said. His other jobs include the interiors and exteriors of the entire Majestic Theatre project, including the inside of the old bank building that now houses the popular Merchant bar and restaurant. One block north is another local Powers job, the storefront of lounge and restaurant Marco & Pepe. Powers also restored the interior of a historic rowhouse at Eighth and Coles streets. In addition to other storefronts and bars in Manhattan, Powers also completely redid his entire apartment building.
What he said sets his work at the Silvermans’ Grove Street project apart, however, is the developers’ commitment to preservation and faithful reconstruction.
“Jobs like these set a precedent and encourage other developers to restore historic buildings,” Powers said. “Eric [Silverman] is really committed to restoring both the interior and exterior,” Powers said. “This used to be a hot spot, a booming theater. This is, at least, an attempt to bring that back.”
For more information on E. Powers Contracting, call (201) 736-3326.