MILTON — The hydraulic lift whines and lurches as it hoists muralist Pam Snyder-Etters toward the looming wall of the Coup Agency, on which she is rendering another imaginative slice of Milton’s history.
Last summer, the Altoona-based artist painted a mural depicting Milton’s transportation history on the wall of the Milton Moose. This year’s painting focuses on an icon of downtown Milton’s past, the Capitol Theater.
The blue and white hydraulic lift sits on a grass plot where the Capitol Theater, a 1,200-seat movie palace, stood until it was destroyed by fire on Nov. 28, 1973. The theater, built in 1934, replaced the Bijou Dream Theater, which was on the same site. The Capitol was the last of three movie houses which once provided entertainment to Miltonians.
Snyder-Etters said the idea for a mural of the theater came up in discussions last fall, after she had completed the mural at the Moose building.
“Jeff and Rick Coup talked about doing it, but on a smaller scale,” she said.
The original design of the mural covered only about 10 percent of the three-story building where the brothers have their insurance and real estate business.
But, Snyder-Etters said, she was having trouble designing a mural that fit the area in which it was originally envisioned. She worked all winter, trying to come up with a design that would complement the space.
“I was trying to incorporate the facade of the theater and the interior, but there are so few photos of it,” she said. Finally, she said, while driving through downtown Altoona, a mural by another artist caught her attention, and that design evolved into her concept of the Capitol Theater mural.
“I finally got a sketch that worked during the spring, and I brought it to TIME and the Coups, and they approved it,” she said.
The mural is funded by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a matching grant from the Coup Agency, and several other grants.
Her design takes in almost the entire wall and includes a depiction of the front of the Capitol, with its marquee, people waiting to buy tickets and a searchlight lighting up the sky. In the sky are portraits of three iconic movie characters of the Capitol’s early years, King Kong and Fay Wray, Laurel and Hardy and Shirley Temple.
“In fact,” said Snyder-Etters, the first movie shown at the capitol was “Baby Takes a Bow” with Shirley Temple.”
She’s been at it for about a week, and already, King Kong and Fay Wray have taken shape, along with the front of the theater.
Snyder-Etters said she’s taken a liking to Milton.
“It’s like a second home to me,” she said. “I’ve got lots of friends here. I’m comfortable. It’s like family.”
She expects to work through mid-August to complete the mural, and when it’s complete, she hopes to hold its “premier,” with a real searchlight, coffee and flowers for the ladies, and a showing of a period film on a screen she’s designed for the wall on which she’s painting.
She’s working now on the high parts, and when she begins working on lower portions of the mural, residents and passersby will be invited to assist.
“People notice these things,” she said with a laugh. “It gets them interested in the history of their town.”
“After all,” she notes, “There’s no future without knowledge of the past.”
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