Episode #107: Saving the Spirit with Colin Egan

Written By Nathalie Kalbach

About This Episode

Colin Egan shares the remarkable story of saving Jersey City's Loew's Theatre from demolition through a 30+ year grassroots effort that transformed this movie palace from an abandoned building to a vibrant cultural center through volunteer dedication and community persistence.

Meet Colin Egan

Colin Egan is the founding director of Friends of the Loew's, the non-profit organization that has led the preservation, restoration, and operation of the Loew's Jersey Theatre since 1987. Born in Jersey City and raised in Union City, Colin became involved in historic preservation through his grandmother's stories about local history and early experiences advocating for the Lincoln Park Fountain.

Connect with Friends of the Loew's:

Key Insights

  • The Loew's Jersey, built in 1929 as one of five Wonder Theatres, was slated for demolition in 1987 after closing in 1986.

  • Colin and his friends were inspired by preservation pioneer Ted Conrad, whose advice to "never let them wear you down" became the guiding principle of their efforts.

  • Community organizing in the pre-social media era relied on neighborhood association meetings, printed flyers, newspaper coverage, and face-to-face conversations.

  • Volunteers contributed over a million dollars worth of labor, from dismantling multiplex walls to patching the roof, fixing plumbing, and restoring ornate plaster details.

  • The theater organ restoration brought back an identical twin to the theater's original Wonder Morton organ, reassembled by volunteers over several years.

  • The city purchased the theater for $325,000 in 1993 after a dramatic city council meeting, with Marilyn Roman casting the decisive vote after a 40-minute speech.

  • Movie palaces were designed as democratic spaces - bringing the grandeur of European palaces to ordinary citizens in an era when architecture typically reinforced class divisions.

  • "Preservation isn't just about saving a building but preserving its spirit" - the idea that everyone deserves beauty and grandeur in their lives.

Visual Documentation

The Loew's Jersey Theatre in its heyday, 1930s. The 3,100 seat movie palace was one of five "Wonder Theatres" built by the Loew's Corporation. -Photo courtesy of the FOL

Volunteers work to dismantle the dividing walls that had turned the grand auditorium into a multiplex in the 1970s. - Photo courtesy and copyright Friends of Loew’s

Loew’s Wonder Morton Organ - photo by Nat Kalbach

The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness filmed in The Loew’s Theatre

Related Resources

Explore Further

Subscribe to my Substack Newsletter for an upcoming expanded photo essay documenting the transformation of the Loew's Jersey Theatre through volunteer work, and reflections on what this preservation success story means for Jersey City's future.

Coming Up Next

Join me for the next episode where I'll be speaking with Irene Christodoulakis, a true Jersey City native who is a screenwriter, gallery assistant and works on major film productions.

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Nat's Sidewalk Stories explores the intersection of place, community, and storytelling through conversations with practitioners, community leaders, and local changemakers. New episodes release on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month through August, with a break in September before Season 2 begins in October.

Transcript:

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the conversation's content and meaning.

Nat Kalbach: Welcome to Nat's Sidewalk Stories. I'm Nat Kalbach, an artist and storyteller exploring the places, people, and hidden histories that make our neighborhoods vibrant. Today I am talking with Colin Egan, who is the driving force behind saving the magnificent Loew's Jersey Theater in Journal Square. It was built in 1929 as one of five Wonder Theaters, and this movie Palace was slated for demolition in 1987 until Colin and a dedicated group of volunteers stepped in. Their grassroots campaign not only prevented the wrecking ball, but it transformed it into an epic volunteer restoration effort that continues to this day.

What fascinates me about Colin's story is how it shows that preservation isn't just about saving buildings, it's about creating community and protecting the democratic spirit of public spaces. From chopping ice on the roof to rebuilding the grand pipe organ piece by piece, Colin shares the remarkable journey of bringing a cultural landmark back from the brink through sheer determination and volunteer power.

Hey Colin, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so happy to have you.

Colin Egan: I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Nat Kalbach: Colin, before we dive into the Loew's story, I'd like to hear a little bit about your own connection to Jersey City. I understand that you grew up in Union City.

Colin Egan: That's true. So I'm an interloper, just kidding. Now, I was born in Jersey City, raised in Union City. But my connection to it, I mean, if you live in Hudson County, at least this area of Hudson County, you're gonna be in Jersey City a lot. And I was in Jersey City as a kid, parents went to Journal Square for shopping and to the theaters. And I went to school in Jersey City for high school. And made some wonderful friendships that I still have and have pretty much been in Jersey City much of the time ever since.

Nat Kalbach: That's so amazing. I heard from you that you had an early influence from your grandmother talking about old buildings, and can you share a little bit how those early conversations shaped your interest in preservation?

Colin Egan: Yes. My maternal grandmother lived with us and since my mother worked, my grandmother sort of raised me during weekdays, which meant as a small kid at least, going shopping with her all over Union City and sometimes down to Jersey City. And my grandmother had lived in that house and in Union City for years since the 1920s. So she was very familiar with it and how things had changed and she was always talking about it. And that got me interested in history and changing scenes and preservation. And I think that's where my initial interest in history and preservation came from.

Nat Kalbach: That's so cool. It's always the relatives, I think that kind of steer that interest, everyone I asked and also my own interest in history, say that that comes from someone in the family. You mentioned in an earlier conversation that reading about the fight to preserve the Hudson County Courthouse, which is just now being restored and renovated again, right. That made a very strong impression on you as a kid.

Colin Egan: Yes. As a young kid, I remember the courthouse being all boarded up going by, I guess it was on a bus and seeing it all boarded up, it was this big massive building. And I wondered why it was boarded up and I guess my grandmother or my parents told me, well, it was closed. They wanna tear it down. And as I got a little older, I was starting to see stories about it in the newspaper and the fight to save it. And I guess I thought that was really cool. This was a good thing to do. People shouldn't let that building be torn down. And of course, that fight went on for a long time, even after it was officially saved the struggle to make sure it was fixed up and reopened. And so I followed that as I got older and that pretty much set me up. That was one of the key experiences or influences that set me up for when the Loew's came along.

Nat Kalbach: Wow.

Colin Egan: There was one other one. I don't know if I told you about that. The Lincoln Park Fountain.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Tell us.

Colin Egan: Well, having been primed by all of this by the courthouse for preservation, and I'm getting way ahead of the story here, but a friend of mine, Jersey City School that I went to, he was an architect. We're following preservation involved in an organization dedicated to it before the Landmarks Conservancy. And then we found out that the Lincoln Park Fountain, which is gorgeous, it's one of, I think it's the largest basin fountain on the East coast. It was not functioning, hadn't been functioning for years. And the county at that point had gotten the really smart idea to fill it with dirt and make it the world's biggest flower pot, basically. And a bunch of us, well my friend and I and some other people in that organization I've mentioned, thought this was not a good idea. And my friend said, oh, you know, let's go to the Jersey City Spirit Festival, which was in June down at the CNJ Liberty Park train terminal and set up a display and see if we can get people interested. And we did that. That's when I met Ted Conrad, which actually takes us back to the courthouse story I had read about. He was the man who led the drive to save the courthouse, and I had read about him and here I was meeting him. So that was a pretty spectacular thing. And I also met Audrey Zapp, involved in that, and another woman who was very much involved in preservation locally, Marge Wessling, who worked with Ted on the courthouse and with us on the Loew's a little later.

But, so I met all these people and we set up our display and got people interested in not turning the Lincoln Park fountain into a big flower pot. And that sort of became the model as it were for what we would do en mass, much bigger for the Loew's a couple years later. And I also think we kind of won too easily in the sense that it probably made my friend and I think, oh, this isn't so hard. We can do it again with the Loew's when we started.

Nat Kalbach: That was really good actually, that you had that experience because otherwise you would've been like, oh God, this is really hard. We should not do this at all.

Colin Egan: Probably you're right.

Nat Kalbach: That's really cool. And I'm glad that we have the fountain because it's beautiful and as a European that reminds me really of Europe. It's a great fountain. But you mentioned some really important names in terms of preservationists of this city Ted Conrad. So you met all these people, how did you connect with these amazing figures of preservation in Jersey City. And what lessons did you learn from them that shaped your approach to preservation? Because I understand you were quite young. You were in your early twenties, I think, right?

Colin Egan: Let me do my math. Yeah. Or mid, early to mid twenties actually. When it started. Well, in terms of Morris Pessin, I'll just say that I had met him, Morris ran that City Spirit festival I was talking about at Liberty Park. So I had met him both with the display we did, and other times just going to it, Ted Conrad however, as I just said before, I had read about him in all the years of reading about the courthouse, and we ended up having a meeting about the fountain and there was Ted, and that's how I met him. And Audrey Zapp, who was not just a preservationist, but an environmentalist, she was interested in what was happening at Lincoln Park and the fountain and I got to meet her. She was a lovely, vivacious, absolutely determined woman. But I will say that Ted was, if the greatest influence on me, it was great to meet him. And what legacy did or what was his influence, determination. Ted's advice was, that the government types or whoever you're dealing with in preservation, will expect and hope you get worn down and give up at some point. And his advice was never let that happen. And 'cause the courthouse battle took from the mid sixties to, well, the early eighties where it was finally reopened again. So he knew whereof he spoke, and his advice has, I think, done me well with the Loew's and does any preservation as well. You've got to be in it for the long haul and try not to get worn down.

Nat Kalbach: That is absolutely amazing advice. The people you're opposing think they can wear you down.

Colin Egan: Yes, that's exactly what he said. He said that's their game. They expect they'll wear you down, so don't let 'em.

Nat Kalbach: I love that. So, let's talk about the Loew's because it's such an interesting and amazing journey and can you take us back to when you first learned that this amazing theater at Journal Square was slated for demolition, and what was your initial reaction back then?

Colin Egan: Well, I have to confess that I was one of those people who probably hadn't been to the theater in a number of years. And again, in the newspapers, both the Jersey Journal, and in those days we also had the Hudson Dispatch we're running stories that the theater was closed, it was gonna be torn down. It was some local people interested in saving it, but they weren't getting too far. And I think the headline that got my attention was, one of the key people in the development company, Hartz mountain Industries, that owned the theater, that bought the theater to tear it down, was complaining that some local people wanted to save it. Like why they're doing it was, you know, what do they think they're gonna do with a theater? And that sort of annoyed me. So. I think I mentioned that I went to school in Jersey City and my best friend from that school was an architect, a young architect just starting. And we happened to be driving down the boulevard and we got stopped at the red light out in front of the theater. And at that point, the theater was all boarded up, with a construction barrier waiting to be torn down. So this is early 1987. It had been closed in August of 86, and demolition was supposedly scheduled for a little later in the spring of 87.

So I looked over at it, and I said to my friend, you know, it's a shame to go and get that building down without a fight. He said, oh, you wanna go to a planning board meeting about next week? And I said, sure, why not? I thought we'd both go do the right thing, stand up and say, this is a bad thing to do, pat ourselves on the back and, but we'd lose. That was my expectation. This is the case of be careful what you wish for because we never did quite lose. Came close a couple of times, but we never lost. And that's for me when the battle for the Loew's began. Now, I will say there were a couple, there were some people who'd been involved before, actually. Bill Oday was on the city council, freshman city councilman at the time, and he'd been trying to get some interest in it and not getting too much traction. There were some other citizens who were interested in it. And we ultimately connected with a few of those and got a meeting together and that's when Ted Conrad walked back into my life as it were I hadn't seen him for a year or two since the fountain. And that was the beginning.

Nat Kalbach: That is so interesting. So you hadn't been in the theater since it closed? I assume you had watched a movie or something when you were smaller, but that, so then you come back, or not smaller, but younger or beforehand, before it closed, and then you come back into the theater, you somehow get a key, like someone gives you a key or like

Colin Egan: Oh no. Well, no, it wasn't quite that easy for quite a while. We had gotten, and actually one of the things as a few of the people who have been working on a project before me had gotten was, a grant to have a feasibility study done to determine if it could be saved or what could be done with it. And, I snuck in with that, and because, you know, at those days the guys from Hartz were hyper. Because they knew that there was a beginning to be an effort to save the place, and they were not happy about it. But I snuck in at that point, it had no power, had no water. It was kind of like walking into the Titanic on the bottom of the ocean. It was dark, cold, and dank. If people are familiar with the theater, there's a, these crystal basket hanging pendant ceiling lights and the Titanic photos had been out not too long before. And there's one with a fish sticking out of a light fixture that looks very much like that. So when I was walking into the theater for the first time, it was like, wow, how about that? And then after that, and this gets to be a far longer story than I think you have time for, listeners have patience for, but we went through this whole series of council meetings and there was a lawsuit.

Hartz was suing the city. 'cause we got in the city council to decide to hold up on passing a final redevelopment plan, which was supposedly going to allow the theater to be torn down. And so they held up on that. Demolition permits were being held 'cause we would, we were going to council meetings with originally a couple dozen people. Soon it grew to 50 and by sometime it got to be several hundred. So the council was holding up on that. And Hartz sued. And we wrote a friend of the court brief that made the case that the theater shouldn't be torn down, that Hartz had made a business risk buying it and more detail than you need to know.

But, in the course of all of this, ultimately a deal was struck. That Hartz would hold off for a number of years while the city and we tried to do something about raising money, and we had access to the theater. And so that's actually when we did sort of get a key to be able to go in and clean it up and what we wanted to be able to bring people back into it so they would see what it was they were about to lose. And 'cause a lot of people hadn't been there for years, I remember people telling me, oh, that place was ruined years ago. There's nothing left to save. So we wanted to bring them in and show them that was not the case. And so we had to go in and clean it up and ultimately figure out how to do something in a building that had no running water. We only got a, what they call a construction service, a drop service of a small amount of electricity. And that was the first round of fighting for the theater.

Nat Kalbach: Wow. I mean, the whole story is just so amazing. Which made me really wonder, and we will get more into the volunteer restoration effort 'cause that's just insane. But the campaign for all of this, this happened, pre-social media, which, you know, I remember, but some people might not remember that there was a time before that. How back then did you get the word out and build community support in those days?

Colin Egan: Very, very much old school. We printed up flyers. I remember having some flyers and little, little signs for windows printed up and going around Journal Square and asking merchants to put them up. The CH Martin, which is the store next to the Loew's, the manager who turned out to be a very nice guy, but he was originally very, oh, this can't happen. You guys are crazy. You're gonna do all this work. But by the time we left, he'd put the sign up in the window and he became a big supporter of it. We went to neighborhood association meetings. One of Jersey City's great strengths is it has all these terrific activist neighborhood associations. And so even now, social media aside, that's one way to get word out. And we went to all of them and made our case. I mentioned the City Spirit Festival that at Liberty Park every June. We set up tables there and got hundreds and thousands of people to sign petitions, and we got to talk to people. I think one of the overriding immediate reactions, like the guy from the CH Martin store was, you're crazy. That can't happen in Jersey City. But we talked to 'em and remind 'em about the courthouse and other landmarks that have been saved and I asked them, why not, don't we need not just a landmark, but wouldn't it be cool to have a functioning theater? And slowly that's how we began to get people interested.

Nat Kalbach: I really command you for that and there's so much truth in also how important it is to connect with people on a personal basis and tell them about it. I wonder, was it in some ways sometimes actually easier to get public attention and media coverage, than it is now with social media?

Colin Egan: Oh, I think so. Social media of course is great. You can sit in your kitchen, which I'm doing right now, actually, and send out, try and get word out to the world. But the downside is people have an awful lot of other things to look at on social media and they self-select. And when we were doing this, starting the fight for the Loew's again, I talk about that City spirit festival that was like the highlight of the Jersey City Summer. Virtually everyone went to that event. And so every community group there was, had a display. So you knew you were gonna reach vast numbers of people in that one spot. Back to in the days when people still read newspapers, I mean, we just lost the Jersey Journal at the beginning of this year, but in those days, people read the Jersey, the Hudson Dispatch, if you could get coverage in one of those newspapers or a couple of them, you knew you were getting the attention of the vast majority of the people who lived in Jersey City and frankly the region. And in a way, Jersey City not having its own TV or radio station in those days almost worked to our advantage because people weren't used to looking to big electronic media. They were used to the newspaper and flyers and going to meetings. And in that sense, I think it was easier to get the word out. I really do.

Nat Kalbach: And it's really sad that the Jersey Journal is gone now too. We are kind of in a news desert, this is a big loss. So in terms of the volunteer restoration efforts, I wanna go back to that because it's so truly remarkable. When I was preparing the show, I was looking into some photos and someone put a number on there, maybe over a million dollars in volunteer labor. Could you share some specific example of the restoration work volunteers tackled and also how many roundabout helped and how often.

Colin Egan: What we tackled. It was pretty much anything we didn't have money for. Anything that you could conceivably do with people who either brought some construction expertise or we could teach, give them the expertise. And that ranged from getting the theater had been divided into a multiplex in 1974, which means they put up these god awful sheet rock walls under the balcony and across the front. We took all that down and I mean, I'm not talking about a couple, eight foot high walls. I'm talking about 30 foot walls that extended from one side of the theater to the other and then back up center aisle. We did a lot of work to fix plumbing, frankly, and the, and electrical work, even though I'm, I probably shouldn't say that, I'll get yelled at by code people.

Well, it doesn't matter anymore, but we had, the building was just not functional. It was dead and it had not been well maintained for years. And so we had to tackle an awful lot of that. Now, eventually we did get, historic trust grant, rather, the preservation grant after the city matched, that was $2 million. And that paid for things like getting a boiler functioning and getting new electric service. And the first exterior restoration doing another one now. But I was able to get an awful lot done on a $2 million budget because I was able to offload lots of things, even in terms of some of the plumbing work. They got the heat on, but we fixed all the broken pipes out from the boiler by volunteers. And I should take you back a little bit to the whole where we started with volunteers and how that happened. First of all, we obviously had built up a core of people who would come out to council meetings and stuff envelopes for us, and walk around with the flyers.

Then, we knew we had to get people back into the theater because, so too many people, it was just this dead building. They hadn't been in there for years. We needed to put some life into it to get people to understand what they were gonna lose. And that meant putting on an event in a dead building. We used tons of volunteers to clean it up. We trucked in water from the CH Martin store next door. We built a mini stage in the lobby because the auditorium was completely unusable. We figured out how to run extension cords and lighting. All of this was done with volunteers and we ultimately ended up putting two seasons of summer shows 'cause there was no heat in the building yet, with volunteers. And I should also say even then, we were doing some basic maintenance work like patching the roof, which was arguably the most important thing we ever did because if the roof hadn't been patched, it would've just destroyed the building. These are all plaster buildings. These movie palaces, they tend to have enormous roofs with, not enough drainage. And when something gets plugged up or torn in the roof material, you get disastrous, leaks. So we had this whole core of people when the building was saved by the city buying it, or pretty much insistence for all of $325,000, the developer that had wanted to tear it down had realized there was gonna be no tenants for the office building that they wanted to build on the site.

And with the pressure we had built in the community interest and a new mayor coming in who had, sided with us about saving it. The developers decided to get out and so we eventually convinced the city council to go along with the mayor and buy the theater for $325,000, which was a really good deal. And then had no immediate plan on what to do with it. In fact, at one point we were told they were gonna moth ball it, which basically means closing it, walking away, and forgetting about it, and it would've rotted and fallen apart and eventually would've been torn down. So we were faced with a PY victory. We'd saved the building, but nothing was gonna happen with it. And people would stop caring about it. My point being that we knew we had to get progress moving on the theater. We had to try and get work going to give people the sense that there was momentum. And the only thing I could think to do was start doing it with volunteer work, which really I thought, as I said before, I thought it was crazy. I never thought it would work. It could work. But we had no other card to play and so we started to convert. The people who were working had been working with us all along into doing volunteer restoration renovation work. And we started to promote and advertise for that. And that's how that came along. And as I said, we tackled virtually anything and everything you can imagine.

Nat Kalbach: You said hundreds of people were on the list. I mean, not everyone came every time, but I wonder like there were things that you didn't know right away, like, I don't know how to roof a roof or, I saw, actually a video where your partner, Pattie, she was there from the beginning as well, but she was doing a tour explaining how people learned how to, replicate, some of the ornate plaster, that was broken down. How was that organized and how did you learn these things?

Colin Egan: I had some experience in construction and work, if for no other reason, my parents had always owned a home. And if you own a home, you have to learn how to fix things, otherwise you won't own the home for very long. It just, even in those days, was expensive. And my grandfather had been a mason, so I had a little bit of experience with that. But a lot of it, and I should say also we were very fortunate. We had people volunteering who had technical skills. The man who completely rebuilt the projection booth. The projection booth had been ripped apart of all the equipment. Whatever was valuable the Loew's company took as they were leaving, and then they left Windows open. So it had become a pigeon coop. We had six inches of guano everywhere up there, but it had to be rebuilt. And the gentleman who joined us as a volunteer, was an academy award-winning film and sound technician. He had the expertise I could never have paid for hope to have paid for, and he was one example.

We have others, a gentleman who came a few years later, used to work for the phone company in their high-end facilities maintenance. He was one of the guys that if aside from normal maintenance, if something disastrous happened. In fact, he was part of the nine 11 recovery team to get phone service back into Manhattan. So he came in and helped take care of the physical plant. But a lot of it was just learning on the go. I remember the first day we started with the volunteer, restoration renovation work beyond just initial cleanup and things. The goal was to get those walls that divided the place up into a multiplex down. And we bought scaffolding and I'd gotten a five minute how to assemble scaffolding from the scaffolding salesman. And everything was piled up in there. We had like 20 people had come. And I remember looking at John Faherty, who is another founding member, a long time member of FOL, another Jersey City native. And we're just looking at the pile of scaffolding. So looked at each other and shrugged. And we just started building it based on what I had been told. And we got it built and we started taking down those walls. And that situation played out repeatedly.

And I would be remiss if I also did an add when the gentleman who rebuilt our booth, he was an older gentleman, so he, he unfortunately became ill and couldn't continue with us. Literally walked in the door. I'll call him a genius. Rob Menino, he's a computer programmer and hardware person by profession, but I don't think there's anything he can't figure out how to do. And he took over the technical operation of the theater, the booth and audio and all of that. And again, very, very fortunate to have those people and the people who were just willing to come in and learn how to do something.

Nat Kalbach: I think it's remarkable and there's something very fascinating about theaters my father-in-law, who just passed away. He was, one of the people to restore the Bound Brook Theater. A long story and very sad stories in between because it got flooded after they renovated, cleaned up things. But now, the orchestra that my father-in-law, founded is, still playing in the theater and lots of musicians from Rutgers, learning, playing in a real orchestra on that stage and. The stories about volunteers and how many hours? My husband remembers his parents were cleaning chairs just like you were. What do you think is it about a theater and what, there must be some very special bonding between the volunteers, but what is it about a place, a theater and working together like that makes people come back and being so enthralled with it, which I don't know if there's any other place that I've heard there are probably some, but is it just that there's so much opportunity of working together and learning new things. What is it? What do you think? Could it be.

Colin Egan: Well, one thing, I think you are right. I think theaters tend to be special because, almost everyone likes going to the theater, likes either seeing a movie or a live show. There's a sense of energy to the place. But with the Loew's for all that, that needed a lot of work. You really didn't have to summon a lot of imagination to see what it had been and what it could be again. And I think there's an enormous sense of satisfaction when we were taking those walls down, for instance, that was a very dramatic change every week. 'cause we tended to work on weekends only. So every week, every weekend you saw more of the original scale of the building coming back, more of the space opened up. It was extremely gratifying. And it is such a grand building but I think this thought that this was going to be thrown away, destroyed for no good reason, inspired an awful lot of people.

In terms of preservation, I think a lot of people are interested in preservation and restoration, but there's not a lot of means for people to get actively involved, hands-on involved. It tends to be seen as this rarefied profession, you know, off somewhere here we brought people in, we explained always, we would explain the importance of the particular task they were working on, which is important. You have to let people have a sense of what they're doing, not just the bigger picture, but the individual project and how it fits into the bigger picture. They had hands-on involvement in restoring this truly iconic landmark. And then when we got to operating the theater, that was the time where you got to see why you'd been doing all this other work in the first place. If you'd been through it from all along. Now people were coming in, they were rediscovering the theater. It's not a joke, it's actually a statement of fact is you love to stand by the front door and you can always tell a first timer coming in because they're just blown away by this great space.

That was rewarding. And then getting to see people enjoy whatever show we had on. And the building itself, 'cause the building is equally part of, and supposed to be equally part of the experience. So I think it all blended into people with the Loew's, had a clear sense of why it was important, what they were doing and how it mattered. And in the end, they got to see some of the results. So I think that all helped. But I don't wanna discourage people from other, I think volunteerism, it's a lot of work for the organizers and there will be discouraging moments. Like you really needed everyone to show up one day and not enough people came. It happens, but I wouldn't discourage anyone from using that in a project you've got because I think it's a good thing for the project. It's a good thing for the community. It's a way of bringing people together.

Nat Kalbach: Absolutely. I think you touched on a lot of things. In general, do you have a particular moment or memory from those restoration days that stands out to you as especially meaningful?

Colin Egan: I do remember before we were really that involved in the work that got the theater reopened, but we were involved in trying to maintain it. And there was one winter where it had snowed and got very cold and snowed some more. And we had two foot thick ice up on the roof and the ice was melting from underneath and squeezing in, finding every hole in the old roof and pouring it in places. And so we, he knew we had to do something of risk, terrible damage. And we were up there with a half dozen or 10 people freezing cold, chopping through ice. And at the end of that day, we had cleared all the drains and the water stopped leaking into the building. And that was an extraordinary feeling of accomplishment, but also just amazing that people had come and done this. Not for pay, but because they believed in it. Similarly, the organ, which we haven't talked about, the organ, original organ was taken out of the theater in 1974. Another, a sister volunteer organization to us called the Garden State Theater Organ Society found a twin. There were five original organs made for five theaters that the Loew's Corporation built at the time, there was, one had been taken out of the paradise Theater in, the Bronx and had been put into a, warehouse and they found it and managed to get it, and it came back in two tractor trail, loads of parts, and it took years of volunteers to put it back together again.

And I remember walking out in the lobby, I think everyone who knew there had been an organ in the place tried to imagine what it would've sounded like and what it would've felt like being in there. But we couldn't, and it was unrecoverable experience. So it seemed, 'cause the organ was gone, well, 10 years I think it was, of putting this organ back together again. One day I was walking in the, out in the lobby and they were walking in the building, in the organ. And suddenly I heard it. It wasn't tuned yet, but it made a sound and I stopped dead in my tracks. I mean, of course I knew what it was on one level, but on another, it was almost like I'd stepped into a time warp that which was gone and never could be back, was now back. And it was an incredible to hear. And of course when they tuned it, you understood this wasn't a little curio because I think a lot of us, oh, it's cute. It'd be nice to have an organ with silent mood. This was a magnificent instrument and been all put back together again. So it was all memorable.

And I'll chew your ear for one more. I just remembered now, remember when I said when the theater was closed, we had to come up with ways of trying to get people back into it. And one of the ways we did was we put on this was, I think 1991. We put on something called the Phantoms Masquerade Ball, and that was the brainchild of Pattie Giordan, my partner and partner in the Loew's and a group called the Collaborative Arts Project, which was a local arts organization at the time. And now the theater had been closed for, except for these like the National Night Out and us cleaning it for years. There was still this construction barricade in front. There was a little door we opened and I can remember watching people in full costume. It was a costume party streaming into this building, people getting out of taxis to get into it. And that was like the moment I realized this can happen and this is what it's all about. We can bring the theater back to life, we can bring life back to Journal Square. And that was a very early memory. It shows you how much has happened since I was almost forgetting it. But that's a key memory.

Nat Kalbach: That is so beautiful. When was the turning point when you realized that the Loew's might actually be saved? And what is happening to the Loew's right now?

Colin Egan: Well answer one. When did we know it was, saved? I guess that defining moment came in 1993. There had been a whole series of city council meetings where, we were trying to get the city just to buy the building, the concept of trying to raise money. And so we had to get the city to buy it for $325,000. The series of city council meetings, we'd inevitably bring a couple hundred people out. And it was actually a controversial thing. There were people on the council who were dead set against saving it. And these votes inevitably came up around midnight because you bring a couple hundred people to a council meeting. It takes a long time for them to speak. Then they get around to voting, which I'm sure made us very popular with the city council.

But anyway, so we had this vote to buy it or not. And if they didn't buy it, that was the end. It was gonna be torn down. And I'll name this one 'cause she, she's a hero. Marilyn Roman, she had great qualms about the laws and she did indicate us. She didn't know she could vote for it or not. So, we come up to her vote and she gives a 20 minute speech on all the reasons why not to save the Loew's. And I remember thinking, this is it. How do we ever come back from this? I think this is the end. And it 20 minutes in, she says, but then I think, and she gave me 20 minutes of why not me? The entire council chambers full of our supporters. Why you had to save the Loew's. And so 20 minutes after that, about 40 minutes into her time, she voted yes. And that was a deciding vote. That was the moment the Loew's was saved, and it was, I cannot think of a more dramatic way that could have played out.

Now I will just add that that was the saving of it from the demolition. Then we had to save it again and again as I explained, by actually start finding a way to put activity in it and then start working on it. But none of that could have happened if it had not been for that vote.

What's happening now, all these years later is that, well, the city of Jersey City felt that success of the Loew's would depend on bringing in a big commercial operator. We did not have a problem with that. We didn't think it really was necessary. There are plenty of nonprofit organizations that work with big promoters, but still are running the show. But it was all right. We were okay with it, particularly if it meant getting more money into renovate the theater, because I have to say that we did phenomenal things with volunteers, but the size of that physical plant is enormous. And the city had previously supposedly been put in enough funding to deal with all the building code issues, and then they never were able to find that money.

So we, and I'm, now I, this juncture what I'm talking about is like 2016, 2018, not that long ago, it still needed lots of money and we were all concerned that the new roof we had put on was getting old. So we agreed to this. And so the situation is now that there is a for-profit entity. It's the same entity that runs the Prudential Center out in Newark, is been provisionally, at least named the redeveloper of the theater. And they are using, both federal and New Jersey State historic tax credits and some money from the city to carry out a soup to nuts renovation and restoration of the Loew's.

Friends of the Loew's is, supposed to still be involved as the nonprofit part of the picture. Our mission is to both continue to ensure the preservation and restoration of the Loew's and to ensure that as many people as possible enjoy and benefit from it by providing diverse, affordable entertainment and the arts. And also we are supposed to be, the stewards of the building's history, which means taking care of archives, recording, the work going on and promoting appreciation of its history. So we are hoping for the best of both worlds. We're not there yet. The work is going on. We're still negotiating because everything has to be reduced to paper. We're still negotiating over our agreement. We're operating it, but we have our fingers crossed.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, I couldn't think of any better Steward than the friends of Loew's, in all those, aspects.

Colin Egan: I just wanna say that I think it is Absolutely and everyone who's been involved with friends of the Loew's and who supported us, I believe have done so because of this vision. And it's a shared vision that preserving that building doesn't mean just physically. That's certainly a part of it. But you have to understand movie palaces were a very particular kind of building. And the concept was to take the grandest architecture of European palaces, in some cases, also supposedly exotic cultures, and build the grandest places, spaces you could imagine for everybody. See up until then, architecture was often used to divide people by class. The elite and the rich got the palaces. Everyone else got shacks. In the concept of the movie palace. It was just the opposite. Everyone got the palace and everyone was brought together in the palace. And I think that adds to the enjoyment of the building. It's built into its DNA, if you will, into the bricks of the building. This is a place where everyone belongs. And we've always got that sense when we've opened it for programming. And I think our feeling is that if it doesn't remain that, I mean, there'll be concerts that are way expensive that people, some people can't afford, but there always has to be reason for people to be able to go there and enjoy it and enjoy themselves in it during a year, say multiple opportunities. Otherwise, we haven't really saved the Loew's. We've saved a building, a beautiful building, but we haven't saved the totality of it, the spirit of it all.

Nat Kalbach: Saving the spirit of the building. I love that so much, Colin. I wanna get to our last, question, which is my signature question I would like to know if you could spend an afternoon with anyone from Jersey City's past, which corner of the city would you choose as your meeting spot, and what would be one question that you would ask them

Colin Egan: well, I can I, I'll rattle off names and I'll tell you who I would pick from those, but I think Jane Tuers, in the colonial era had a homestead where Hudson Catholic High School is now, and the story goes. She was one of the people who helped get word to George Washington about Benedict Arnold. 'cause she had to go into New York. And she went to New York to take care of the American prisoners over there that give them some comfort, food and things like that. I'd love to ask her, is that story true? Because you it goes roundabout all the time. I'd love, love to. And, and how did she get the bravery to go over to New York in the first place?

The Marquee Lafayette, just because we still don't know exactly where he was. Was he in the Apple tree house? Was he outside of it? And what did it look like in those days? Love to ask him that question. Mark Fagan, the first Republican mayor, I think, and the first genuine reformer Jersey City had. I'd like to ask him why he thought. He could take that on. And, and of course he didn't succeed all the way, but let's ask what, what inspired him. Jeff Burkitt was a guy from Alabama who's for some reason took it on his life work in the 1920s and into the thirties to try and depose Frank Hague. And he would set up on a, literally a soapbox in Journal Square and start denouncing Frank Hague. And a few minutes the Hague's cops showed up and beat him up and dragged him off. He was big news. I'd like to ask what possessed him to come to New Jersey and Jersey City to do that?

Mary Norton, who was the first woman elected from New Jersey to Congress, I think from any northeast state promoted by Frank Hague I should say. I'd like to ask her what it was like to be such a pioneer and in the Capital, which was clearly mostly an all boys club in those days. Frank Hague I would love to meet and talk with him. I tell you the truth, I both, I have a love-hate relationship with him. He was one of the biggest crooks you can imagine, did some horrible things like beating up Jeff Burkitt. But he also did a lot of, some extraordinary things for Jersey City and just love to try and get a beat on what would make him tick.

Ted Conrad just like to bring Ted back, just to just to spend even a minute with him would be wonderful, but just to show him what we've done with the Loew's and what's going on with the city and get his take on it. One more before my final pick. Tom Stanton, that's a name very few people know and that's a shame. Tom Stanton was a hometown boy who became the head of ultimately New Jersey's biggest bank. Its last name was First Jersey Bank and he, this was in the early seventies when Jersey City, particularly downtown, seemed to be breaking apart and dying when most of urban New Jersey was seemingly falling apart. He refused to move his headquarter, the bank's headquarters out of Jersey City. In fact, he built ultimately two new buildings down the exchange place. And most importantly of all, he helped underwrite the original brown stoning movement that got people to move in to. I mean, you, no one who didn't see it could believe what downtown Jersey City was like in those days. Abandoned buildings, roofs, caving in on the brownstones. You couldn't give them away. He helped write mortgages when no one else would to get the initial, effort going. And he also supported many, many local organizations. He was friends of the Loew's First Chairman, I'd love to bring him back and say, what do you think is the come of Jersey City with all that's going on?

My final answer would be, I'd like to spend an afternoon with a few Loew's, patrons from the twenties or maybe the thirties to find out what it really did mean for them. We've heard how people loved it and I'd like to hear it. I've heard it from people more recently, but I'd like to hear it from that time. And while I'm at it, I would also ask them what they think of Jersey City now. What was Jersey City like for them when they grew up? And it's clearly a very different place. How so? What? What could they make of it? What do they think has been improved? And what do they think has been lost along the way? So that, that's my cheat answer. I gave you a whole list, but if I had to pick it, would be some just ordinary folks who went to the Loew's back in the day. And of course I'd wanna meet them at the Loew's.

Nat Kalbach: I love that. And it brings it back to what you said earlier about the spirit of the theater, and you would definitely then get some more answers of how that spirit lived back in the days when the theater was opened and was brand new. Thank you so much for sharing these stories and also for your decades of dedication to preserving this amazing, treasure. Thank you for giving us this building that's still there. And thanks for the interview, Colin.

Colin Egan: You're welcome, and as I sign off, I just have to say. It was not just me. There are lots of people who played an enormous role in this, so I always have to acknowledge them. Without them, the theater would not be there, so thank, thank you for your thanks on behalf of them.

Nat Kalbach: Thank you Colin, for sharing this incredible journey with us. Your story really reminds us that when we fight to save historic places, we are preserving something deeper. Those special moments of collective wonder that happen when we gather in beautiful spaces built for everyone.

What strikes me most about the Loew's story is how it embodies the best of Jersey City Spirit. That persistent determination in the face of "you can't do that here" and the diverse community that came together around a shared vision. As the Loew's enters its next chapter with professional renovation underway, I'm really grateful that the friends of the Loew's continues as stewards of not just the building, but its democratic spirit.

If you have never experienced this magnificent theater, I hope this conversation inspires you to visit it once it reopens, hopefully in the spring of 2026. And if you're passing through Journal Square or you come out of the Path Station there, take a moment to look up at that theater and remember, it's still there because ordinary people refused to give up. Thank you for listening to Nat's Sidewalk Stories. I'm your host, Nat Kalbach. Join me next time when I'll be speaking with Irene Christodoulakis, a true Jersey City native who is a screenwriter, gallery assistant and works on major film productions.

Our theme music is "how you amaze me". Composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler and Pat Van Dyke. You can find show notes, photos, and more information about my guests as well as related content on my substack. See the link in the about section of this podcast.


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Episode # 106: Building Bridges with Thaler Pekar