Memorial Auditorium ‘great historical and nostalgic significance’
“Somebody should have the foresight to preserve it,” the Gary native said while standing in front of the 1927 Gary landmark dedicated to residents who lost their lives in World War I. “I almost cried when I saw this.”
Abdallah, a 1968 Froebel graduate then known as Carl Hemphill, reminisced about attending graduation ceremonies and professional wrestling matches in the auditorium. “Benito Gardini was here, he would bounce like a ball when you threw him.”
Once the hot spot for Northwest Indiana culture, politics and events, Memorial Auditorium has been on a slow death slog since it closed in 1972. A widespread 1997 downtown fire gutted its interior at 7th Avenue and Massachusetts Street, leaving just the exterior of the building commissioned by U.S. Steel and designed by Joseph Wildermuth.
Attempts to save it flared up briefly, then sputtered.
As Abdallah walked around the building, most of its facade still stood. A yellow excavator had knocked down part of a west wall but no one was there working Tuesday.
In June, the city’s Redevelopment Commission awarded a contract to KLF Enterprises, of Markham, Illinois, to tear down the building to make way for an $11 million affordable housing project called Broadway Lofts.
Mayor Jerome Prince said Memorial Auditorium held “great historical and nostalgic significance” to the city and Northwest Indiana.
“I am saddened by the need to demolish the building. ... It is important we balance an appreciation of our history with the need to move forward with developments that will make Gary a better place.”
Brad Miller, director of Indiana Landmarks Northwest office, said the Gary Historical Commission had worked with the city to save the building, but all that remained was its facade. “That was deemed unfeasible,” he said. “So unfortunately, it has to be taken down.”
Miller said the sense of loss seems strong to local residents because they were connected to the auditorium.
“It was the performance space for the city. … There were so many different performances and events, they almost always touched everyone’s memories.”
Memorial played host to politicians, entertainers and sporting events.
In 1945, Frank Sinatra implored a packed audience of Gary teens and their parents to end a strike by white students who opposed racial integration at Froebel High School. He told them believing other races were inferior was a pillar of Nazism.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, not being friends, playing together, visiting each other’s families, sticking up for each other,” Sinatra told the crowd. “Other kids in other centers don’t have things like you have. Educational advantages, especially. You’re throwing them away.”
In 1948, President Harry Truman delivered a blistering campaign speech a week before the election in which he defeated Republican Gov. Thomas Dewey, of New York.
“President Roosevelt brought the capital of the United States back to Washington from Wall Street and it’s going to stay there just as long as the Democratic Party controls the government,” he said.
Truman railed against the GOP-controlled Congress’ passage of what he called “the rich man’s tax bill,” and criticized Republicans for gutting labor laws and farm safeguards.
“Don’t be deceived my friends. They took you to the cleaners in 1929. They want to do it again,” Truman said.
Abdallah, a retired Air Force nurse, said preserving Memorial Auditorium would have helped retain a sense of pride in the city.
“People fly 2,000 miles to Rome to see ruins. It’s a shame, they had everything here.”
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