Quintessence Theatre Group buys historic Sedgwick Theater for $2.3M

Quintessence Theatre Group has purchased part of the historic Sedgwick Theater in Mount Airy for $2.3 million. A tenant of the theater space for 14 years, Quintessence stages classic productions in what used to be the Sedgwick’s lobby. The board of directors of Quintessence bought the front section of the building from David and Betty Ann Fellner, with funds from private donors and financing by Mid Penn Bank.

The theater now owns the picturesque marquee, performance space, and neighboring retail space. The Fellners retain ownership of the back storage area of the building, which once held the movie theater.

Philadelphia-area philanthropists David Haas and Lisa Clark gave Quintessence a $1 million lead gift to help cover the $2.3 million cost.

State Sen. Art Haywood (D., Philadelphia/Montgomery) helped Quintessence become eligible for funding through the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Funding Program. The theater group is planning extensive renovations to update the 96-year-old structure, and has secured $1.75 million toward renovating the marquee and interior infrastructure.

Quintessence founding artistic director Alex Burns anticipates the entire slate of renovations to the building will cost upward of $8 million, including $1 million to renovate the marquee and facade. Quintessence has brought in Philadelphia architects Voith and Mactavish. Work on the marquee will begin next spring, and Burns hopes it will be completed some time in the summer of 2025.

Further renovations will expand the theater’s seating capacity to 250 from the current 130, upgrade the HVAC system and plumbing, and improve accessibility. Quintessence will stage its productions in other venues during the 2025-26 season so renovations can be completed. Burns plans for the theater to return to the Sedgwick for a grand reopening at the end of 2026 or start of 2027, ahead of the historic building’s 100th birthday in 2028.

Purchasing the building has long been Burns’ dream. The Mount Airy native started the theater company in New York in 2010, with the goal of producing classics for a new generation. On a visit back home, he learned that the Sedgwick was available and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the historic space he once visited as a teen, so he moved the theater group to his hometown.

“Most classic plays, Shakespeare’s plays, they’re plays about kings and queens and gods and epic stories. The grandness of the Sedgwick was just such a perfect space in which to tell these older tales, and to transport our audiences to different times,” said Burns. “It’s not often that a new theater company gets to kind of grow into a space, or have a space that works perfectly as the Sedgwick does for the type of work we present. It felt like kismet.”

Erected in 1928 by the Toursins, a family of developers in Mount Airy, the art deco building was once a palatial movie theater that could accommodate an audience of more than 1,600. It was designed by renowned Pennsylvania theater architect William Harold Lee, whose work includes the Lansdowne Theater, Jenkintown’s Hiway Theater, and the Seville Theater (which now houses the Bryn Mawr Film Institute).

After shuttering in 1966, the Sedgwick was gutted and the building split in half. It went quiet for decades until the Fellners purchased the theater in 1994 and opened the Sedgwick Cultural Center, which hosted exhibits, jazz concerts, and the annual arts festival ArtJam.

By 2006, the cultural center was shuttered due to a lack of finances. The Fellners put the Sedgwick up for sale in 2013 but ended up holding onto the theater. At the time, Quintessence was still a small nonprofit that wasn’t in a position to make an offer. In 2019, talks among Burns, the Fellners, and Quintessence’s board of directors began in earnest as Quintessence felt capable of raising the funds needed.

It took about four years of negotiations to reach closing day. “When you negotiate with a couple like the Fellners, who truly loved that theater, it’s a long, slow negotiation,” said board chair Patricia Stranahan, who previously served as Quintessence’s executive director. “They wanted to be very careful about selling it. Betty Ann, in particular, felt quite strongly about the cultural presence of the theater in Mount Airy.”

While Quintessence wanted to purchase the entire building, the board conceded that it was too much of a financial risk and settled for half of the building plus 16 additional feet of space.

Stranahan added that they plan to create a demising wall between the two spaces.

“This is really step one of what is going to be a much more ambitious effort to ultimately bring the Sedgwick into the current moment and create a world-class performing arts center and event space for Northwest Philadelphia,” said Burns.