The document summarizes the long history of performances and concerts at facilities in Pacific Grove, California dating back to the late 1800s. It describes how the Chautauqua movement brought many entertainers and performances to the community. In the early 1900s, a high school was built with an auditorium that hosted countless school and community events. An organization was formed in 1939 called the Monterey Peninsula Concert Association to bring performing artists from all over to the auditorium. Over the decades, it hosted famous performers like the von Trapp family, Robert McFerrin, the Vienna Boys Choir, and the Joffrey Ballet. By the 1960s, the auditorium had aged but was restored by the

1. many. His pride in his schools
was justified ...”
Build It and They Will Come
Nearly three decades
later, Weeks was called upon to
design an addition to the high
school; nine class rooms that
connected to an auditorium with
construction costs allowed at
$80,000. JJ Grodem of Alameda
was given the contract to build
the addition in August, 1930.
The building permit provided
for $85,000 in construction
costs and $15,000 for heating
and electric. The auditorium was
completed April 1931.
On Wednesday evening,
April 22, 1931, the Pacific
Grove High School held a
dedication ceremony to offi-
cially open the new auditorium.
The PGHS Glee Club, Band, Orchestra,
and Mixed Chorus presented a program of
classical and popular music. A one act play,
The Fifteenth Candle, was presented by the
Junior Class. The 1,000 seat auditorium
was filled with theater goers for the event,
the largest concert hall on the Monterey
Peninsula.
From the day the auditorium opened
it has been used for untold numbers of
school, Civic, and social events. Eight
years after the auditorium opened, Elmarie
H. Dyke found the Monterey Peninsula
Concert Association whose purpose was to
bring the performing arts to Pacific Grove.
Each year it would present a concert series
of four remarkable artists to its member-
ship of who’s who on the Peninsula. In
1939, the Association started with 357
members and membership grew every year
until 1942 when its membership dropped
to 407 because the required blackouts dur-
ing World War II caused concerts held in
the afternoon. The Association met its goal
of 1,000 members by 1944. Many of the
artists Mrs. Dyke and her Board included
in their concert series each year were just
on the edge of greatness, and it is said her persuasive manner put Pacific Grove on their
tour schedule.
And They Came,
These Talented
Performers
One of her first “gets” was the von
Trapp family who immigrated to the United
States in 1939, and started touring in 1940.
Today they are probably most famous for
the movie musical, The Sound of Music,
and not their perfect four part harmonies
and octave range. The very year they began
their tour as the von Trapp Family Singers,
they performed on our auditorium’s stage as
part of the 1940-1941 concert series.
In 1949, the Philharmonic Piano Quartet
made their public debut in New York, and that same year they made an appearance in
Pacific Grove. Seven years later the San Francisco Opera Quartet, whose mission it was
to bring opera to non-operatic cities, was part of the concert series. The diversity of the
entertainers that were presented by the Monterey Peninsula Concert Association in Pacific
Grove continued to amaze through the years. Robert McFerrin was an operatic baritone
and the first African-American to
sing on the stage at the Metropolitan
Opera when he made his debut as
Amonasro in Aida. In 1958, he came
to California to work with Otto Pr-
eminger on Porgy and Bess.
Porgy was played by Sidney
Portier, who did not have the
voice for the part, so, Portier
lip-synced while McFerrin
sang. Yes, McFerrin is the
father of 10-time Grammy
award winning artist Bobby
McFerrin – Don’t Worry, Be
Happy.
The Robert Joffrey The-
ater Ballet was founded in
1956 as a touring company
that in 1965 became known
as Joffrey Ballet. They were
a six-dancer ensemble that
toured the country in a sta-
tion wagon pulling a U-haul
trailer performing original
ballets by Robert Joffrey. In
Pacific Grove’s Performing Arts Center: If these halls could talk . . . or even sing
Robert McFerrin, opera baritone, (and
father of Bobby McFerrin)
“The Feast of the Little Lanterns,” a Chinese Operetta, performed in 1913
Architect William H. Weeks
Pacific Grove High School Auditorium, April 1931
Robert Joffrey Theater Ballet
The Vienna Boys Choir
By Dixie Layne
Pacific Grove has a long and storied
performing arts history. A mere four years
after the Pacific Grove Retreat Association
held its first summer encampment in 1875,
the western branch of The Chautauqua Lit-
erary and Scientific Circle was established
in Pacific Grove. The Chautauqua brought
entertainment and culture for the whole
community; orators, musicians, entertain-
ers, poets, thespians, singers, and “special-
ists of the day,” such as ventriloquists and
comedians.
Music was important to Chautauqua.
Band music was much in demand as were
spirituals, ballads, and popular songs. John
Phillip Souza’s band was frequently seen
on the circuit. Opera become a part of the
Chautauqua experience and a permanent
Chautauqua Opera Company was estab-
lished.
The last Pacific Grove Chautauqua As-
sembly was held in the summer of 1926.
The Chautauqua’s national movement
for self-improvement through popular
education with lectures, concerts, dramatic
performances and a four-year reading
course had an obvious influence on Pacific
Grove; it established a high regard for
education and the arts throughout the com-
munity. Pacific Grove Unified School Dis-
trict was established in 1895, and Pacific
Grove High School (PGHS) was Monterey
County’s first high school, providing
educational opportunities to residents of
the Grove and students from surrounding
areas. As the number of students at PGHS
grew, schools continued to be built and by
January 1904 the public made a plea for its
third new high school. The School District
explained that during the previous school
year the high school student body had
reached a total of 47, and by January 1904
the enrollment had “already reached 93;
two teachers had been added and still there
remains 76 pupils in the care of one teacher
and on this date there are 23 students occu-
pying chairs in the aisles”, explained C.H.
Mixxer. This “overnight” growth in high
school students can be attributed to the state adding high school to the free public school
system in 1904. Between 1910 and 1920 the number of public school students more than
doubled in California and Kindergartens became part of the system in 1920. In the follow-
ing years, California passed tax and finance laws that, for the first time, provided backing
for a comprehensive, statewide public school system.
The plea for a new school was heard and the community pulled together to start the
process. February 1904, an agreement was reached to offer a 20-year bond to finance the
high school and in April the Pacific Improvement Company (PIC) offered to sell Pacific
Grove two parcels of land for $2,500; offered were five acres of land on Forest Avenue
just outside the City plat for the high school and a block on Pine Street for a playground
to the primary and grammar school. The PIC offered to fill in the ravine on the Pine Av-
enue property at their expense in order to make it useful for a playground. The price with
the work to level the Pine Avenue block was considered generous and “indicated the PIC
is ready at all times to do every thing in their power to advance the interest of the Grove”,
wrote the Pacific Grove Review.
The Board of Education published a “notice to architects” in the May 1905 Pacific
Grove Review inviting architects to submit a plats, specifications, and detailed estimates
of a proposed high school building to include
four classrooms, Library, principal’s room,
necessary laboratories, cloak rooms, etc.
The complete cost of the building was not
to exceed $25,000, outside of furniture and
architect’s fees. It can only be surmised
that this notice and request to architects was
unsatisfactory because the project met with
delay. It was five years later, August 1910,
that a subsequent “notice to architects” was
published with more specificity not only
about the building specifications – one story
with a finished basement for a contract price
of $28,000, but also regarding the architect’s
fee; to be3% of construction costs and an
additional 2% if the architect supervised the
construction. In hindsight the delay can only
be considered fortuitous because renowned
architect William Henry Weeks submitted his
proposal and was awarded the contract. The
five acres on Forest Avenue was cleared in
August 1910. The school built of reinforced
concrete in Weeks signature Spanish Revival
style with Greek Revival and Neoclassical
influences opened its doors September 1911.
William Henry Weeks, Architect
(1894-1936)
“The construction of a new school
building is so rare an occasion that it makes
an epoch in the average school system,
“wrote Weeks in 1911. As epochal though the
event might be for an individual school dis-
trict, new school buildings were going up all
over California from 1910 through the 1920s,
and Weeks was designing them. Weeks’ ca-
reer coincided neatly with California school
building boom. His early adoption of rein-
forced concrete as a building material and his
work in small towns combined to give him
an advantage in the educational building
boom. Weeks’ firms designed over 1,000
structures in Northern and Central Califor-
nia. His obituary in the San Jose Mercury
News read, “Weeks was a genuinely great
architect and all over California there are
monuments to his skill. For that matter,
all over California there are thousands of
youngsters whose lives are a little hap-
pier and a little healthier because of what
W.H. Weeks knew about school architec-
ture. Mr. Weeks was a specialist in school
design and knew what exposure provided
students with the best light, what type of
exterior brings with it the great beauty ....
schools were his chief love and he used to
say no man in California had designed as
Pacific Grove High School, September 1911
The von Trapp Family Singers
1959 that station wagon pulled into Pacific
Grove and the ensemble performed on our
stage. Oh what a night.
At the invitation of President John
Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Ken-
nedy, 22 members of the Vienna Boys
Choir performed at the White House In
January 1961, This performance turned
into a 9-month tour of the United State,
which included a stop in Pacific Grove to
perform as part of the 1960-1961 concert
series. Upon their return to Vienna they
filmed Almost Angels for the Walt Disney
Studios that was released in 1962. Just
when did these boys go to school?
Times They Are a Changing
Although the Concert Association
was not officially dissolved until 1990,
the concert series had stopped some years
earlier as the powerhouse team that kept
the performers hitting the boards of the
auditorium was slowed by age and dwin-
dling numbers. Rock and roll was here to
stay; enter the Monterey International Pop
Festival summer 1967. As things were
changing the auditorium began to show its
age; it was looking a bit ragged. Just in the
knick-of-time, in walked the Rotary Club
with much needed muscle and money;
they wanted to restore the auditorium to its
majesty of years gone-by to celebrate Ro-
tary Club International’s centennial. Once
their work was complete, a nonprofit was
formed to carry on the work to bring the
theater back to life – to fill it with music
and dance and theater. Enter the Founda-
tion for Performing Arts Center – Pacific
Grove.
Center for Performing Arts is OPEN
The Foundation’s purpose is to
continue the good work started by Rotary
Club; to maintain and enhance the audi-
torium now named the Performing Arts
Center. It also works to continue in the
tradition of the Chautauqua Assembly and
Monterey Peninsula Concert Association
by bringing a wide range of performers and
performances to the community. The Foun-
dation also works to benefit the performing
arts programs in our schools.
Details for all concerts are available on
the website www.performingartscenterpg.
org and Facebook.
The program for the 20th season of the
Monterey Peninsula ConcertAssociation
Elmarie Hurlbert (Dyke) performing at
Chautauqua
Program ca. 1950s
Program for the opera “Madame But-
terfly,” performed ca. 1958 by the Cos-
mopolitan Opera Company.
Place cards Mrs. Dyke used to encour-
age Association membership. There
were a number of characters and musical
instruments shown. They were cut out so
that they stood up.
Pen and Ink drawings from The Sea Urchin
(Pacific Grove High School yearbook), 1933.
Above, the auditorium. Below, the entrance to