Photos: Reclaimed wood from Maine’s oldest opera house

Renovations to the Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center, considered the state’s oldest opera house, began this month. A crew from Barn Boards & More, a local lumber salvage company, pulled and rescued the theater’s tongue-and-groove floorboards on Thursday to reuse as flooring or make table tops. By December 2023, the three-story performing arts venue at Gardiner is expected to reopen to the public with a 400-seat theater, large lobby and concession area, full-service box office, green rooms for performers and an elevator. Local hotel owner Benjamin Johnson transformed the former livery stable into a performance hall in 1884, and it became an opera house in 1888. All photos by Kennebec Journal photojournalist Joe Phelan.
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Josh Baker walks a floor Thursday at the Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner. A team from Barn Boards & More was removing and preserving the tongue-and-groove floorboards from the third floor theatre. The Gardiner company, run by Brett Trefethen and his wife Amy Trefethen, typically dismantles barns and then sells the boards or uses them to make furniture that they sell. He said the boards could be repurposed as flooring or could be made into a tabletop. The demolition was part of a renovation project that began this month and is due for completion in December 2023.

The brand name “Cobbs & Mitchell ‘Electric'” stamped into the back of salvaged flooring from the Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner. Brett Trefethen, owner of the company that salvages the flooring, said the boards were likely made in the early 20th century when sawmills went electric, which is probably why it’s mentioned in the brand image.

Barn Boards & More’s Brett Trefethen shows strips of a poster that workers found used as wedges, or tapered wedges, under floorboards the company was salvaging Thursday from the Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner.

Trevor Sprague fires nails at salvaged floorboards near an “Opera House” sign Thursday at the Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner.
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