The Williams College ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance is a 106,000 square foot performing arts center which Barr & Barr completed on time and on budget for Williams College. Nationally renowned architect William Rawn designed the complex, which consisted of a new Parking Garage, a new Theatre and the renovation of an existing Theatre.

Williams College utilizes the theatre to host a wide array of performing arts which are open to the local community. The College envisions the facility as a world class performance venue as well as a space to provide workshops to students and the local community. During the summer, the facility is taken over by the world renowned Williamstown Theatre Festival.

The Center for Theatre and Dance was constructed adjacent to the College’s existing Adams Memorial Theatre. The exterior of the building is clad primarily with German “Jura” limestone, a curtainwall and accented with veneer brick. The interior houses three separate performance venues: 1) The Main Stage, an elegant three level 550-seat horseshoe proscenium stage theatre that is adorned in quarter sawn ash veneer paneling; 2) the Center Stage, a 225 seat black box theatre, which incorporates state-of-the-art technology including a tension wire grid, a “Gala” stage lift, movable “Seating / Performance Gondolas” and completely reconfigurable seating; and 3) a dance rehearsal and performance venue which is completely encapsulated in glass and provides views of mountain vistas in nearby Vermont and New York State. In addition to these major venues the building also provides faculty offices and teaching space for the theatre and dance departments.

The building of the Center was extremely complex due to the numerous radii of the façade, challenging soil conditions, the high level of finish and detail and the extent of the communications wiring required to service and integrate the performance venues with the back of house spaces. The remoteness of the project also provided the additional challenge in securing adequate manpower and qualified subcontractors to construct such a highly technical building.

The success of the project was due to overall quality of construction, the team’s ability to overcome technical construction issues, the value engineering effort undertaken to balance budget with the architecture goals, the adherence and achievement of a tight schedule and the overall grandeur of the finished product.