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Most arts centers have loyal supporters, but for those associated with The Town Hall the connections run particularly deep.
Many New Yorkers have childhood memories of the famed concert and debating venue, founded in 1921 by suffragettes and a platform for speakers from Winston Churchill to Amelia Earhart. Marian Anderson, Isaac Stern and Joan Sutherland are among the many who made their concert debuts at the hall.
"It's a piece of New York history, a jewel of a hall," says President Marvin Leffler, whose recollections of shows he'd seen in his youth, like one with Billie Holiday, convinced him to take the unpaid position.
Others crucial to the hall have similar stories. Jerome McDougal, former chairman of Apple Bank, gave the hall a mortgage after 19 others turned it down, in part because he remembered performing there at 10 as a member of a brass band. Developer Douglas Durst joined the board of directors because his late father had been a member.
Nostalgia only goes so far, but it's been the key ingredient as the embattled hall, which had $5 in the bank when the current board bought it from New York University in 1978, has recovered its financial footing. As the hall approaches its 76th anniversary celebration in October, Mr. Leffler and his cohorts...