Facilities

The Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts , home to the Department of Theatre Arts, is the third oldest building on the Bradley Campus.

Constructed in 1908 as Hewitt Hall, the University’s gymnasium, the facility was a lasting gift from Lydia Moss Bradley. Originally constructed at a cost of $75,000, when it opened, it was the nation’s third largest gym. Designed for the use of 600 students, Hewitt Hall housed a swimming pool (now part of our orchestra pit), a men’s gym with a 1200 seat basketball court and running track, a woman’s gym, and a third floor social hall.

Seventy years later, in 1978, after a rich history of intercollegiate sporting events and conference tournaments, not to mention two world wars where the facility served as a barracks and training center, Hewitt Hall was converted into the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts.

Named for Jack and Mary Hartmann, two tremendous supporters of Bradley University, the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts houses Meyer Jacobs Theatre, the 300-seat thrust stage, where Bradley University Theatre produces an extremely diverse season of shows, from musicals to classics, for a subscription audience.

The Meyer Jacobs Theatre, named for Peoria businessman Meyer J. Jacobs, a 1939 graduate of Bradley University, is a wonderful performance space with a fully trapped fore-stage, cat-walk access to all lighting and major rigging positions, dimmer-per-circuit lighting, an ECT Expression computerized lighting board, and a SFX digital sound control system with a 16 channel mixer board. The facility also has a direct fiber-optics connection to Internet2 that allows the department to mount truly innovative mediated theatre productions.

The Hartmann Center also houses a 75 seat black-box Lab Theatre, which serves as our performance studio and as a venue for a wide range of exciting student-directed and designed works including new plays, original pieces and class projects.

Rounding out the facility is our costume and scene studios; dressing rooms and make-up lab; box office; art gallery and lobby spaces; design classroom; student lounge area; stage management office; conference/seminar room; and departmental and faculty offices.