Throwback Atlanta: From Manuel’s to puppetry center, vintage spaces evolve

Founded in the mid-19th century on just six acres, Oakland Cemetery is considered the city’s first public green space, following the era’s trend of magnificently manicured graveyards as gathering places for citizens – with and without a pulse.

Now, the 48 acres of carefully tended gardens are a hub of life, even among the headstones and statues paying tribute to the 70,000 buried within their walls. With its more than 1,600 trees, the cemetery is certified as a wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation as well as a butterfly garden by the North American Butterfly Association.

But the most fertile ground is in the thousands of stories that the Historic Oakland Foundation brings to Atlantans every year, through a combination of research, outreach and programming.

The Foundation launched in 1976 when the cemetery was designated a National Historic Site. One of its signature offerings since 2006 is its annual Halloween season event, Capturing the Spirit of Oakland, which assembles actors to portray a changing roster of “residents” for tour groups.

Foundation executive director Richard Harker believes Oakland is “changing the idea of what a cemetery can be. The whole city’s history is here. If you are a transient or if you are passing through or even if Atlanta is home for you, what better place to help ground you in this city?”

Credit: COPY

Credit: COPY

Part of the Foundation’s work is rooting out stories with descendants of those buried at the cemetery who may not even be aware of their ties to the site. Sure, there are famous residents such as Kenny Rogers, Maynard Jackson, Bishop Wesley John Gaines, Margaret Mitchell and Bobby Jones. But there’s also an abundance of “incredible stories of people that shaped the city that no one’s ever heard about,” Harker said.

Last year, the Foundation completed a six-year fundraising and restoration project on the cemetery’s 3.5-acre historic African American burial grounds. Until 1963, the cemetery was segregated, like all public facilities in Atlanta.

“You walk around Oakland, and you realize people were segregated in life and death, and it’s visceral and it’s upsetting,” Harker said. “Every school group we have come through, students have this profound reaction to that. And what a way to learn about our past -- the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Oakland Cemetery: 248 Oakland Ave. SE, 404-688-2107, oaklandcemetery.com.

Credit: Robb D. Cohen / robbsphotos.com

Credit: Robb D. Cohen / robbsphotos.com

2. Variety Playhouse – 1940

Many longtime Atlanta film buffs remember George Ellis, the passionate movie lover who dusted off and worked to revive the Variety Playhouse, originally the Euclid Theatre, which closed for the first time in the early 1960s.

The Euclid debuted in 1940 with a showing of the Cary Grant rib-tickler “My Favorite Wife.” Crowds were thick in during the theater’s early heyday, reportedly cramming up to 800 people into tiny seats each screening, with everyone squinting at a 20-foot-wide screen.

The Euclid shuttered in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the early 1980s that Ellis -- also known for playing Bestoink Dooley, who introduced late-night horror flicks on local TV -- took on the formidable task of reviving the by-then dilapidated theater. He envisioned a place that would show timeless favorites and indie arthouse releases, much like the Plaza Theatre does today.

Unfortunately, the man once designated “the good-natured grandfather of art film exhibitors in Atlanta” died in 1983, before his vision could be fully realized.

With its greatest champion ascended to the great projectionist room in the sky, the theater swapped hands for several years before Steve Harris arrived in 1990.

Harris took over the Art Deco edifice, transforming it into a music hall. The newly named Variety Playhouse kicked off with gigs by no-slouch-acts the Count Basie Orchestra and Tom Rush.

And the venue kept building momentum. A long and diverse list of artists who’ve taken the hallowed stage includes the Meat Puppets, Dresden Dolls, Gnarls Barkley, of Montreal, Toots and the Maytals, and more. Sara Bareilles and They Might Be Giants have recorded live albums here. And John Waters has hosted his demented Christmas show.

Best of all, you can still stand at the front of the stage, communing under the bright lights and hazy aura of sweat and excitement with your favorite troubadours, tribute bands or standup comics.

Variety Playhouse: 1099 Euclid Ave NE, 404-524-7354, variety-playhouse.com.

Credit: John Spink

Credit: John Spink

3. Manuel’s Tavern – 1956

There are two ways to instantly spot a patron who has never been to the beloved community bar and restaurant, said Manuel’s Tavern owner Brian Maloof.

First: If they pronounce the name of the Tavern as “Man-wells.” (For the record, it’s “Man-yools,” named after its founder, the late Atlanta political mover and shaker Manuel Maloof, Brian’s father.)

Second: Customers who “stand at the door, waiting for a hostess,” Maloof said. That’s just not Manuel’s style. “What we say here is, you come in on your own, you find a place that you’re comfortable, sit down and we’ll find you and feed you.”

The serving ethos around nourishing folks does not just apply to food and drink but also to the sense of community and connection you feel when you enter those doors again and again.

Manuel knew what he was doing in picking the location. It was no accident that the bar happened to be situated in Fulton County, just across the county line from DeKalb, which was at that time dry.

“If you were an Emory student, an Agnes Scott student, and you wanted a place to drink, we were the closest place that you could come just across the county line,” Maloof said.

Since its founding, the bar has earned a reputation for attracting intellectual, artistic and well-connected civic players to its tables. Maloof can rattle off a variety of groups that hang out regularly. There’s the yearly Atlanta Orthographic Meet, an adult spelling bee. The EV (Electric Vehicle) Club of the South has met here for decades and helped get four charging stations installed. Atlanta Fly Fishermen, Atlanta Press Club …

Several movies have been filmed at the Tavern, from “Anchorman 2″ to something called “UFO: Target Earth.” President Obama even “dropped by” once in 2015, to speak with local college students and even play darts.

It’s the ever-running tab of goodwill from city denizens that makes Maloof feel that even though he’s technically the owner, he’s more of a “historical preservation manager. My job is to keep the place feeling the same, but still evolving.”

Before Manuel’s completed its most recent renovation in 2016, it hadn’t been refreshed since the 1980s. When they closed most recently, allowing for much-needed building updates, Maloof said it “scared the hell out of our customers.” Many feared that Manny’s might come out unrecognizable.

“I knew that I was successful in the renovation when people came in and said, ‘I don’t see what you did,’” he said. “I’m thinking to myself, you have no idea all the stuff that’s been done in here.”

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t made discernible changes starting around 1999, they added more draft beers to the rotation.

And early on, Brian’s late uncle Robert Maloof, Manuel’s business partner and youngest brother, suggested a novel strategy: To have waiters make customers’ drink orders. That way, the waiter remembers your beverage’s unique specifications — that you want two and a half olives in your martini, or that you prefer a twist of orange. They deliver it to you, and, voila, a relationship is fostered.

Nobody else in the city does this, Brian claims, “because it does cost money and it’s tricky.” But if the drink mix is on the money, and the customer is happy, “then that builds business.”

Manuel’s Tavern: 602 North Highland Ave. NE, 404-525-3447, manuelstavern.com

Credit: Hyosub Shin

Credit: Hyosub Shin

4. Center for Puppetry Arts – 1978

There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs when many an adult strolls through the Center for Puppetry Arts’ Worlds of Puppetry Museum, turns a corner and finds Kermit the Frog or Big Bird waiting to greet him or her: instant weeping.

OK, maybe that’s just the emotional reaction that some of us have when we meet our fleece-covered childhood BFFs face to face. But the numbers will also back up that something special is going on here: 134,000 visited the center last year, including 72,000 students on field trips, and there were 547 theatrical performances presented.

This robust programming took more than 40 years of steady work to build – starting with the center’s founding by pioneering puppeteer Vincent Anthony, who recalls his first encounter with a marionette as love at first string.

“When I got the marionette in my hands, when I was working with it, it was alive to me,” Anthony recalled. “It can grab you and pull you in and make you believe that it’s speaking to you.”

As a theatrically trained young artist, current artistic director Jon Ludwig remembers answering a newspaper ad in the late 1970s that said, “Puppeteers wanted, will train.” He submits now that he’s never stopped training.

That’s humility speaking. Ludwig’s shows have picked up nine Citations of Excellence from Union Internationale de la Marionnette, kind of the Tonys of puppetry. He adapted Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival, was heavily involved in Jim Henson Company’s “Bear in the Big Blue House” and earned an Emmy nomination for the Disney Channel’s “The Book of Pooh.”

But back in the 1970s, puppets’ main cultural cache came from Jim Henson and the Muppets – who spurred, as Anthony refers to it, a “Renaissance of puppetry.” During that time, Anthony was serving as president of the American Association of Puppeteers, when the idea began to percolate of creating a hub for the artform in Atlanta.

Credit: Jennifer Brett

Credit: Jennifer Brett

They wound up setting up camp at the Spring Street Elementary School property, with just the auditorium and one classroom, then adding spaces slowly until puppetry commanded the entire building. Along the way programming to appeal to adults, including XPT: Experimental Puppetry Theatre, has been added.

A major boost in visibility and attendance is no doubt owed to the Henson family’s 2007 donation of Jim Henson’s priceless puppetry collection. But those ties go back to the very beginning.

Anthony remembers flying out to Los Angeles, where Henson was filming 1979′s “The Muppet Movie,” to share what he planned for the Atlanta grand opening and to appeal for Henson’s participation.

“I said, ‘Will you come and bring Kermit and cut the ribbon to open the center?’ And Jim looked at me and he said, ‘Well, Kermit will be there and maybe he’ll bring me along.’” Both were ribbon-cutting star attractions in September 1978.

A decade later, Jim Henson and the Muppets returned for the center’s 10th anniversary celebration, hosting live performances of “The Muppets Take Atlanta.” The rest is history.

For Ludwig, the reason that the center continues to delight and draw audiences after more than four decades is because the art form “speaks on so many levels. It can be an educator. It’s entertainment. It can be deep thought. It’s history.”

Plus, there’s the fact that puppets will outlast us all. “Our museum is full of [the work of puppeteers] who have passed on, but their puppets are still alive,” Ludwig said. “So, it’s eternal in a way.”

Center for Puppetry Arts: 1404 Spring St. NW, 404-873-3391, puppet.org.

If you have a favorite longtime locale, especially one off the beaten path, share your suggestion at alexishauk@gmail.com.