Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Historic Levoy Theatre In Millville NJ Collapses

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Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 01-04-2011, 03:56 PM:

Story Link

quote: nj.com

MILLVILLE — Authorities on the scene of the Levoy Theatre collapse just held a news conference to offer details of what happened.

About 3 p.m., the city fire department received a call that there had been a partial collapse at the theater. About 20 minutes later, there was a larger collapse, officials reported.

Workers had been restoring the historic theater.

A crew of about a dozen workers were inside the Levoy when one of them noticed the plaster beginning to slip in the north corner.

It gradually opened up a 6-to-8-foot gap before three walls and all the steel came down. All of the workers escaped injury.

A 25-year veteran Millville firefighter suffered a broken left ankle or leg.

The tea room next door was damaged and all the gas meters for the apartments in the Fath Building, on the other side of the Levoy, were ripped off, causing a gas leak.

The gas had to be shut off to three buildings and the buildings had to be cleared of fumes before anyone was allowed back.

The streets were blocked for two blocks on either side of the building, from Route 49 to Mulberry Street and from Second Street to Buck Street.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 01-07-2011, 01:52 AM:

I'll be taking my MIL back up to Cape May in a week or two.. will try and make it a point to ride by for a photo op..

I wonder what happened?

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-08-2011, 12:48 AM:

Mitchell, do you know of this theatre? Was it a decent place? A movie palace-type or just a regular neighborhood cinema?

Restoration is a tricky business. We are having everything up to the stage proscenium demolished and a new theatre built right up to the stage. But specialists had to come in and do core samples of the concrete and bricks to determine the strength of every part of the structure before any work can be done on it. I was fascinated at the detail with which they worked. Took them a whole month to take the samples and have the lab test them.

It is easy to cut corners in this type of work, especially making the wrong assumption that because it's standing and has been standing for 40 years that it's just as solid as it was when it was built. The pyramids they aint. [Wink]