'A corporation of thirty citizens bought the local theater ("The Colonial") last January (1912). We are professional and business men, maintaining no academic theories, believing in a practical way that a protected and well-conducted theater is as sound a municipal asset as a good public library is. We have not printed any report. 'After cleansing, re-decorating, and re-equipping the house, we shall install a resident stock company, to open May 20, under the direction of Mr. William Parker, who is at present producing manager at the Castle Square, with Mr. Craig. We have no very definite plan, except to make our theater a place of entertainment for intelligent people.' Among the comments of the press involved in stating this item of news at the time, the way the 'Nation' put it, and the way the 'Outlook' put it, are fairly representative of public opinion of the need and value of this civic step. Said the 'Nation': 'Some of the leading citizens of Pittsfield, Mass., being dissatisfied with the commercial management of the principal theater in the town, have bought the house with the avowed purpose of conducting it upon lines more worthy of intelligent support.' Under the caption 'A Community Theater' the fact was recorded in the 'Outlook' in a news editorial (Feb. 10, 1912), from which the following sentences are an extract: 'Pittsfield is ... a community which represents the best of old and new New England. A very interesting experiment is being tried there by the Pittsfield Theater Company--a company of gentlemen--who believe that in a town like Pittsfield the theater justifies a consideration not dissimilar to that with which we regard our public library or our art museum! These gentlemen are leading the way in a movement which ought to be widespread. They have faced, not a theory, but a condition, and they will discover that, so far as immediate popular use is concerned, the theater is of more importance in a community than either the art museum or the public library. If they give the people what will interest the people, ... if they arrange for popular prices, secure good actors, and treat the theater as a community institution in the same sense as an art museum and a library are community institutions, the "Outlook" has small doubt of their success.' However the Pittsfield experiment turns out, considered, as it should be, as a sign of the times, it tells us emphatically--first, that the present system of meekly taking whatever plays are sent on from New York by a monopolistic commercial management, for its own good, is by intelligent citizens seen to be anti-civic. Again, it tells us that the shortest cut to give the community open access to all the dramas it wants itself or may assimilate for its needed pleasure and development is naturally seen to be the public library method as first established by Boston and since approved and adopted by all public-spirited communities.