Event to benefit Stanford White Casino

NEWPORT – As The Stanford White Casino Theatre is being readied for a $4.5 million renovation, the owners are planning a benefit open house for Tuesday, Aug. 11.
The event, which will run from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. with admission set at $10, is an attempt to bring in additional funding for the renovation. To date, more than $3.6 million has been raised, according to a release sent out by Linda Gordon, chair of the restoration committee.
Donors who contribute $100 will “be invited to leave a fingerprint on a specially created panel that will become a unique work of art.” There are also naming opportunities, starting at $1,000 to have your name on a seat.
The casino, which is at the International Tennis Hall of Fame, is the first and only theater that was designed by Stanford White and his firm McKim, Mead, and White – the firm that later designed the Rhode Island Statehouse.
“We’re going to do our best to preserve the theater and also update it in a way that a theater department can use it,” the project’s principal architect, Marta Werenfels, of Durkee, Brown, Viveiros & Werenfels, said recently. She added, “It will have the infrastructure … that older theaters never really had.”
For information about The International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum, visit www.tennisfame.com.