Hedgerow Theater

To an existing c. 1840 grain mill, Price added the front portico of reinforced concrete and red tile with rubble stone columns, like those of the barn adapted for the Stephens house, and adapted the mill floor to a studio/meeting room/theater for his community. When the Rose Valley Corporation closed, the Guild Hall was acquired in 1923 by Jasper Deeter, whose work with the Provincetown Players, among them Eugene O’Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay, led him to try a residential repertory theater. Wharton Esherick (see CH38) worked with the theater in its early years, designing furniture for the lobby. The theater was rebuilt after a disastrous fire that destroyed much of the main hall, and thrives today. Fortunately, the Wharton Esherick table and chairs made of axe handles survived the conflagration. The repairs to the exterior substituted modern gray Portland cement for the original warm earth-toned rough cast stucco of the Price era.