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Some people shop for clothes, cars or coffee.
Not Stacy Maria Dutton.
For the last half decade, she’s been theater-shopping, looking for a second home for Lantern Theater Company, the theater company she leads in Center City.
In Center City, where Lantern holds its subscription series in the basement of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, there’s the Avenue of the Arts. There are theaters on almost every corner, from the Walnut Street Theater, the nation’s oldest, to InterAct Theater Co., which created two theaters from a ballroom in the Drake, an architectural wonder of an apartment building with a history of poshness.
Of course, Center City offers a plethora of restaurants, bars, stores and museums.
So why Mount Airy — which does have restaurants, bars, stores, and museums, just not as many.
Because it’s a neighborhood, Dutton said, that already has a proven audience for theater – just down the block Quintessence Theatre Group will mount a seven-play season starting in September.
Because there’s parking on Germantown Avenue or in a supermarket parking lot half a block away with two train lines and two bus routes nearby.
Because she and Lantern’s co-founder Charles McMahon live in the neighborhood and Lantern’s offices are across the street, next to the Mount Airy Art Garage, a nonprofit arts incubator.
(Oh, and by the way, there are three bars/restaurants sharing the block with Quintessence and the church.)
And also, because the former Mt. Airy Presbyterian Church is beautiful, with soaring stained-glass windows, and most importantly, height and a clear-span, meaning no Academy of Music-like pillars to block the view of whatever is on stage.
“We are super-excited about this Mount Airy theater,” Dutton said.
The Lantern, which had tried and failed to secure both the Painted Bride Art Center’s former mosaic-adorned building and the former University of the Art’s Art Bank building, is now in the middle of a $4 million capital campaign. Just under half is earmarked for the Mt. Airy theater, creating space for 180 seats, plus new bathrooms, dressing rooms, and a green room for the actors. A Philadelphia premiere of a well-known play will launch the theater in the fall of 2027, Dutton promises.
The Mt. Airy Presbyterian congregation, which has moved a few blocks away, sold the church and its education wings to developer Ken Weinstein, who converted the education buildings to condominiums.
Some might wonder whether Mt. Airy, a middle-class neighborhood with plenty of college graduates among its residents, can support two professional-grade theaters. But the leaders of the two theaters aren’t worried.
“The more art that’s available the better – and that’s very exciting,” said Alexander Burns, artistic director and founder of Quintessence, housed in the Sedgwick, a former movie theater. “We want as much theater as possible within walking distance. Theater is a habit, and the more people practice that habit, the more they can attend.
“We can become the Avenue of the Arts Northwest,” he said.
Quintessence is also in the middle of a capital campaign, having raised most of $5 million, he said.
Pre-show dining
P.J. McMenamin, who is the grandson of the bar’s first owner, runs McMenamin’s Tavern directly across the street from Quintessence. McMenamin’s is its own Mt. Airy institution.
“I never tried to be anything other than the neighborhood bar,” said McMenamin, who took over the business after his father died in 1989. He threw out some of the miscreants who had turned the place into their hang out, and in return got his tires slashed.
“I had to buy a $1,000 burner car to drive to work,” he said.
That was then. These days, it’s a place full of regulars, families, and newcomers who can get a full-course meal, choose from many beers on tap, or just grab wings, fish and chips, or a burger. “We get all walks of people who come in here — white, Black, gay and lesbian and stuff like that. We’ve catered to everybody and we’ve never had an issue.
“And now,” he laughed, “we’re a theater bar for the five weeks there’s a show. It’s been great for us. They run in and know they can get a BLT or a sandwich and be out the door” in time for the opening act.
Historic restoration
What has McMenamin excited are Quintessence’s plans to restore the theater’s art deco exterior.
Built in 1928 as a silent movie theater, it was named after Sedgwick Tourison, a local family that owned a lot of land in the area. (A nearby street and train station also carries his name.)
In 1994, David and Betty Ann Fellner bought the building, saving it from ruin. They still own the back of the building – the massive 1,600 seat theater. Quintessence moved into the front in 2010, building its performance space into the movie palace’s elegant oval lobby. In 2024, it bought the front and some adjacent storefronts for $2.3 million.
McMenamin said his older brothers told him about going to the movies at the Sedgwick, but he was too young. “I never made it to the old theater,” he said.
Burns said work will start in June on cleaning the terra cotta molding on the outside of the building with restoration of the historic movie marquee set to begin in September.
He was enthused about “the sheer light it is going to create. The whole façade is going to come to life and I think that energy is going to transfer on this block.”
‘Ways to bring a full community together’
To Burns, what he’s doing at Quintessence and Lantern’s plan for the former church speak to the nature of Mt. Airy as a neighborhood.
“I grew up in Mt. Airy and know its history since the 1980s,” he said. “The part that is so magical about Mt. Airy is that it is such an integral part of the city.
“There’s the expanse of the Wissahickon [park] going right through the middle of it, as well as the people’s very intentional mission of celebrating humanism and bringing the community together whenever possible, despite differences of race, age, gender, and sexual orientation.”
“Part of what is so exciting about building a world class cultural place is that it gets to be a celebration of that spirit and that intentionality of thinking forward and progressively and looking to the future and looking at the ways to bring a full community together,” he said.
The neighborhood, Burns said, gives him an audience of people who are willing to be challenged by Quintessence’s roster of classic works and adaptations of classics.
“They are excited to get engaged with the materials and to be open to the experience of being challenged, of engaging one’s own imagination,” he said. “Most people think of theater as entertainment, where they can sit there half-asleep and be mildly titillated and that’s not what Quintessence does.”
Nor Lantern.
It’s that same energy and intentionality that’s driving new growth on Mt. Airy’s second business district, about five blocks south on Germantown Avenue, said Philip Dawson, executive director of the nonprofit Mt. Airy Community Development Corp. The two districts are separated by a playground, where everyone’s kids played softball, a library branch, an Acme supermarket, the fire station, and a large senior citizen complex.
There is a new bakery, the Downtime Bakery with its excellent breads and homemade bagels. A few blocks away, Jennifer Low, owner of The Frosted Fox Cake Shop, baked her way to the winner’s slot on the Netflix’s “Sugar Rush.” Adelie Coffee House serves lattes across a driveway from a favorite Mt. Airy ice cream parlor, Zsa’s Ice Cream. Several restaurants are opening in the area and ReAnimator Café says its Mt. Airy location on the 6500 block of Germantown is coming soon.
Other newish businesses include a gift shop, Pax Flora Goods; Mt. Airy Biergarten with brews from Tired Hands; a mosaic studio, Bella Mosaic, offering classes and workshops, and a Grocery Outlet supermarket.
Bridging the two districts is Malelani Café, a restaurant where you can settle in with souvlaki and listen to open-mic poetry, or jazz, or just bring your knitting for a twice-monthly gathering.
“It’s a wonderful neighborhood with the diversity it is known for, both racially and economically,” Dawson said. “The resident ethic of supporting small businesses is very strong and that is something that really strengthens the district.
Thinking about Mt. Airy and its people, “the first things that come to mind are welcoming, resilient and vibrant,” Dawson said. “That’s what the people believe and live.”
