Performing Arts Center Lobby
Lafayette Hall, CT State Housatonic (900 Lafayette Blvd)
It was 1989 . . . Jay Misencik and Geralene Valentine owned and operated a commercial photography business in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They worked in approximately 5,000 square feet of renovated loft space that was once home to the Rose Dress factory.
That summer, they began photographing people on Bridgeport’s Main Street . . . the people who lived, worked, or just hung out on “the street”. There was the butcher, the barber, the bootblack, the bank president, the museum curator, the cop, and the newspaper “boy” who would soon celebrate his 81st birthday.
Eventually, Jay and Geralene met Barbara Jean Zanesky. Barbara was operating the Joy Center Church Ministries out of the building that housed the shuttered Palace and Majestic Theatres, a hotel, and several storefronts . . . all on Bridgeport’s Main Street. She was helping many of Bridgeport‘s most needy people. The “Joy Center” offered daycare services, spiritual guidance, and sometimes just a safe place to spend the night. The theatre complex had no heat, had a leaking roof, and was plagued by court litigation and tax problems.
Jay and Geralene photographed several people at the “Joy Center” and also spent time photographing the theatres’ interior architectural highlights. With very little electrical service in the theatres for their lighting, Emil and Bob Rolleri at the Ocean Sea Grill let Jay and Geralene run an extension cord from their restaurant, across Main Street, to light the theatres’ interiors for photography. The City of Bridgeport took ownership of the theatre building complex in 1992. The Ocean Sea Grill was gone, but the city upgraded the electrical service and replaced the leaking roof. The renovations made it easier to photograph the theatres.
In 2014, Jay and Geralene complemented their architectural photos of the Palace and Majestic Theatres with a series of portraits of people who had a connection to the 1922 vintage theatres. They photographed former “candy girls”, usherettes, a man who play-boxed his dad on the Palace stage in 1931, the runner-up in a “best gams” contest, the last manager of the theatres, and women who had their first date at the theatres with the boy they would eventually marry. Jay and Geralene also recorded the stories these people shared about how the Palace and Majestic Theatres influenced their lives . . . stories of a magical place in a magical time.
Jay Misencik & Geralene Valentine
