Dr. Charles Cook, Assistant Clinical Professor at Drexel University’s Construction Management Program and GBCA Board Member, produced and hosted To Preserve These Walls (2018), a 25-minute short film about the restoration of the Academy of Music.
To Preserve these Walls examines the efforts to preserve an 18th century Opera Hall architectural masterpiece while renovating it for the 21st century staging demands of theatrical productions. Included in the challenges is the extraordinary story of shutting the Academy of Music down in the middle of a Friday afternoon concert when a damaged truss was found above the audience auditorium. The program details the engineering methods used to structurally save the space with minimally invasive structural repair.
