Historic Train Depot Becomes Performing Arts Center
Leers Weinzapfel Associates’ design for Middlesex Community College’s Richard and Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center reimagines the dormant 1876 Boston & Maine Railroad Depot at Towers Corner in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a new performing arts venue. Located at a highly visible entry to the Lowell National Historical Park (America’s first cultural park), the building sat vacant for decades following a variety of uses. Preserved by the National Park Service as a historically important downtown gateway, the 20,000-square-foot renewed structure is now part of the city’s revitalized urban core.
In need of a new performing arts center for its urban campus, “MCC” identified the building’s potential and purchased it for development. Leers Weinzapfel’s innovative design (watch the video) restores the depot’s deteriorating exterior masonry and incorporates a redesigned interior that contains three major teaching spaces—a 100-seat music recital hall, dance studio, and a two-story, 177-seat “egg” theater. The theater’s unique form solves multiple design challenges: structure to support the facade, functional to maximize theater seating while allowing for adequate lobby circulation, and metaphorical to represent the arts resurgence in this once thriving city.