Scales Fine Arts Center: Celebrating 50 Years
Named in 1979 in honor of James Ralph Scales, the 11th President of Wake Forest, this facility contains two sections that are nowadays referred to as Lower and Upper Scales. Lower Scales houses the theatre, dance, and art departments while Upper Scales is home to the music department.
The building was first dedicated as “The Fine Arts Center” in 1976. The Lower Scales space houses the Tedford stage named after professor Harold Tedford and the Ring Theatre, the Eleanor Layfield Davis Painting Studio named in honor of the Winston-Salem painter, the Mary Duke Biddle Green Room named in honor of the founder of the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the arts slide library which is named for Andrew Lewis Aycock, and the Hanes Art Gallery which is named after Charlotte and Philip Hanes. In 2010, a second dance studio (made from a converted airplane hanger) was added behind lower scales to increase practice space.
The Music Wing was dedicated in 1982. Brendle Recital Hall can be found in Upper Scales and is named after James David Brendle. It is the site of numerous performances and talks/speeches like the President’s State of the University Address.
50 Years of Stories
First and foremost, I met my future husband in Rob Eastman-Mullins’ Design & Production class. So many stories…late nights in rehearsals where breakthroughs were made; Saturday morning work calls with breakfast and coffee and listening to NPR in the costume shop…Opening nights, emerging from backstage, still mostly in makeup and hair, to run up the stairs by the Ring and hug the heck out of your friends.
If the building could talk, it would have hundreds of stories! With our first show after COVID, a happy-tears moment when the lights came up for the first time on our gorgeous cast, poised for action behind their little boats, saying, “We’re on the river now!” So sweet. So many more…I have pretty much lived in Scales for almost three fabulous decades.
When I got married in 1999 – we did it on the Tedford Stage and had our reception in the Scales lobby.
Entering Scales is like walking into a warm hug of a building that has been a constant in my life since I was 6 years old.
It is memories.
It is joy.
It is home.
Scales was always a safe place to land, whether I was rushing to an Anthony Aston Players meeting, in tech for a show, or just hanging with my friends in the lobby, it was my home away from home!
