If walls could talk … It wouldn’t be a cliché at the Lincoln Theater. This Long Street venue could bend your ear with stories about the magic moments it’s seen – the nights when Louis Armstrong filled the room with his stratospheric trumpet solos and gravelly vocals. Or, the evenings when the utterly suave and sophisticated Duke Ellington led his orchestra in some of the finest original jazz compositions ever made, and the dates that “Fancy Nancy” Wilson made special for young lovers. Those walls could also talk about Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Miles Davis, Stan Getz and a host of lesser-known, but just as talented, local performers.

Late next year, the Lincoln Theater will start making memories for a new generation when the doors open after an $11 million renovation. “It will be a state-of-the-art facility for the African-American artistic community like no other,” says Bill Connor, of the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA). “There will be at least 10 local companies in residence – everything from dance troupes to theater companies, even a Jazz Academy for adults and children.”

The resident-art groups include the Columbus Children’s Theater; the Jazz Arts Group of Columbus (America’s oldest not-for-profit arts group dedicated to jazz); Leap of Faith Dance Studio; the Ujima Theatre Company; and The Ohio State University Department of Theatre.

The Lincoln also will benefit in incalculable ways from its artistic director-in-residence, the internationally-known stage and theater star, Maurice Hines. “We are honored and thrilled to welcome the talent and experience of Maurice Hines to Columbus and to the Lincoln Theater,” says Larry James, the Lincoln Theater Association Board president. “The collaboration of Hines with the wealth of local talent in the theater’s resident arts groups is sure to provide the community with an abundance of exciting, quality entertainment.” Hines will generate three productions every year for the Lincoln and present a jazz/hip-hop dance workshop for youth.

The rebirth of the Lincoln will spark renewed interest in a neighborhood steeped in black history. Long Street was part of a black business and residential district known as “Blackberry Patch.” Black historian Anna Bishop chronicled its life and times in her four-volume book: Beyond Poindexter Village. The Lincoln Theater opened in 1928 at 751 E. Long St., and was known as the Ogden Theater. It was the creation of black entrepreneur James Albert Jackson.

This effort was Jackson’s response to the rebuff of a Mt. Vernon Avenue theater owner who wouldn’t allow black patrons admission. “I’ll build a theater better than anyone in the United States,” Jackson said. “The whole interior took you back to Egypt, with marble pillars carved and painted to look like Egyptian antiques,” Bishop recounts. “The Club Lincoln was where Sammy Stewart’s Orchestra performed, and little Sammy Davis, Jr. was 4 years old when he made his first impromptu appearance onstage.”

Some of the original Egyptian motifs will be fully-restored in the renovated art house. The Lincoln will also be outfitted with cutting-edge lighting, sound and projection equipment. There will be seating for 450 and an expanded stage and orchestra pit. Add to that the ongoing revival of the surrounding neighborhood now called the King-Lincoln District and you have one of the most exciting developments since the days of the Model Cities projects of the 1970’s. The walls of the Lincoln Theater will be anxious to talk again.

Watch Jerry Revish on the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. editions of 10TV News HD.