Savage Club to share space with locals

As cars flew by the former Faith Bible Fellowship Church on Route 34 in North Lansing, the passengers might have heard something they haven’t since last November. From the basement of the old church, there was singing, pianos playing and brotherhood.

The pandemic has forced many people to stay at home, but Sunday, the Savage Club of Ithaca met in person. Now, the Savage Club wants to share its space with other local arts groups who want to perform, free of charge.

The Savage Club is a social organization centered around the performing arts. It was founded by a group of Cornell University students from the mandolin, banjo and glee clubs in 1895. The club purchased the church in Lansing at 1004 Auburn Rd. in December 2020.

The club was founded when a group of students accompanied the Cornell crew team to the Henley Royal Regatta in England. The group found itself stranded in England, unable to get home, and the Savage Club of London helped them put on a variety show to raise enough money to get back to the United States, according to the club’s promotional material.

The club in London was named after English poet Richard Savage, who died in 1743. Since its founding, the local club has worked to promote the arts in the Ithaca area. Through direct grants, organizations like Running to Places, Vitamin L, the Women’s Opportunity Center, the Cayuga Vocal Ensemble, Armstrong School of Dance and Next Jennaration Dance Studio have received funding from the Savage Club.

The club has been meeting virtually since the omicron variant of COVID-19 became prevalent in Tompkins County. It had been meeting once a month, with dinner provided and club members performing in a variety of artistic endeavors.

Singers, magicians, poets, pianists, instrumentalists, composers and other kinds of musicians all call the Savage Club home. It also has a jazz band, a folk band and a cover band called The TARPS.

For the first 125 years of its existence, the club didn’t have a permanent home. When club member Adam Perl joined more than a decade ago, the club met at a restaurant on Triphammer Road. Since then, the club has met in downtown Ithaca and on South Hill across from Ithaca College’s campus.

Savage Club president Jack Roscoe said Lansing was the right choice for many reasons.

“It was the perfect building,” he said. “Good performance space, great acoustics, new roof, new furnace, new siding — it was in very good shape.”

After purchasing the property, the club raised funds primarily through chicken barbeques in Lansing.

Little work has been done to the performance space because it came ready to host crowds. The club usually meets once a month in the basement, which has a kitchen and a stage.

Perl said the basement has needed some work after it was purchased, but with the pandemic eliminating most chances to perform in public, the time has been spent making improvements to the meeting space.

Luckily, Roscoe knows how to make cabinets, and the club has electricians, plumbers, carpenters and painters in the group.

“Frankly, the prices in Ithaca are too high for us,” he said. “The church came on the market at a bargain, and it needed work, but we had all those skills. We’ve been able to do almost all the work ourselves, which has been really satisfying because we weren’t able to perform.”

Performing anywhere has been difficult during the pandemic, but with COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations going down across the county, the Savage Club is hoping to give arts organizations from the Ithaca area a chance and a space to rehearse and perform.

The club is offering the former sanctuary, which seats 100 people, as a space for other arts organizations to use for free.

“Even though we’ve been around for well over 100 years, a lot of people, when you say the Savage Club, they say, ‘I’ve never heard of it,’” Perl said. “A lot of people don’t know that we own a church, and further down the list is that we’re offering it for free. One reason we haven’t advertised widely is because of the pandemic. Singing is one of the worst things for spreading the virus, so we haven’t done much singing at all.”

Perl said the sanctuary is the “perfect space for poetry readings, small ensembles, quartets, dual pianos, art shows.”

“We’d like to open it up to the entire community to use the space for rehearsal or performance,” he said.

Perl said offering the space for free will likely not be sustainable, but for now, the mission of the club is to promote the arts in the Ithaca area. He said that mission is especially important now when groups haven’t been able to perform.

“We want it to be used more than anything,” he said. “A lot of performers are shy because of the pandemic, but we’ve been performing with masks and behind plexiglass screens with a masked audience, and it’s been working.”

The club has hosted a jazz night on the first Sunday of the past two months, with the next performance scheduled for March 6 at 4 p.m. Masks and vaccination against COVID-19 are required, and while admission is free, donations are encouraged.

That isn’t the only performance on the calendar. Since the late 1920s, the club has performed during Cornell University reunion weekend. During the last two years, that hasn’t happened, but with Cornell planning an in-person reunion in June, the Savage Club is scheduled to perform at 8:30 p.m. June 9 at Statler Hall.

Before the pandemic, the club held three large performances that accounted for most of its funding, the first being a Valentine’s Day-themed variety show at The Unitarian Church in downtown Ithaca in February.

The second is the Cornell reunion show, and the third is performing at Ithaca High School during Little Apple Fall Follies. The club splits the profits between itself, the Ithaca Rotary Club and the Ithaca City School District Fine Arts Booster Club.

Any group or individual interested in using the space can contact Roscoe at (607) 227-5073.

Lansing at Large appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com.