What Will It Take to Light Up the Queen?

 The Queen Theater in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, a five-story, two-tiered, 2,000-seat venue built in 1915 and closed since 1959 has had a lot of buzz in the news lately.  It is to become a live music venue run by World Cafe Live, which calls its home the Philadelphia campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

I had been on a hard-hat tour of the moldy, reeking Queen Theater several years ago, and there are actually some pictures of the pre-renovation on http://lightupthequeen.org/. A bunch of preservationists were called in for a photo shoot in front of the Queen Theater in support of historic preservation tax credits the other day, and I had a chance to see how the renovation is coming. As you can see from these pictures, the building is pretty much gutted today, which prompted a planner from the City to say that there was not much left of the Queen.  This will be interesting to watch.  Judge for yourself.

Wow!  That's a lot of sky between those new steel beams!  Watch this blog to see how it progresses.