REXBURG — You might not recognize Bill Hall around town, but you’re probably familiar with his work in the Romance Theater.

Hall has put in more than 700 hours since the spring of 2016 volunteering to help renovate the theater. Hall’s work can be seen in the painting, the gold leaf and other details in the building.

“I just want to see the old theater come back to life,” Hall said.

The Romance Theater first opened in 1917. According to rexburg.org, the theater featured silent movies and vaudeville acts until 1935, when talking pictures became the standard movie format.

The theater operated until the Teton Dam Flood in 1976, which destroyed much of the theater and movie memorabilia housed in it.

Though it reopened a few years later, the theater never truly overcame the devastation and ruin caused by the muddy floodwaters. In a Nov. 29, 2016, Standard Journal article, City of Rexburg Cultural Arts Director Jackie Rawlins said that nothing in the theater was spared by the flood.

“There wasn’t anything on Main Street that wasn’t underwater. The whole theater was completely filled. There is still a hairline on the stage area where you can see the water line,” Rawlins said.

In 2001, the city of Rexburg purchased the Romance Theater and at one point considered demolishing it to make space for public parking. Instead it sat empty until renovation work began picking up speed in 2016.

That was when Hall got involved.

The first time he walked into the Romance Theater, he saw that the only progress that had been made was in painting the stage.

“It was white,” he said. “I asked Jackie, ‘When are you going to finish this?’ She said, ‘You got a color scheme?’”

Rawlins and Hall met with other people who shared a vision of what the Romance Theater could become. Hall joked that it was his initial question to Rawlins that got him into doing renovations.

“Be careful what you ask for!” he said.

The Romance Theater’s ceiling was a labor of love for Hall. He said he considers it one of his favorite projects.

“The medallions on the ceiling and the dark blue turquoise are like dark gems,” he said.

Hall said he loves volunteering at the theater. Being up on scaffolding provides him with a perspective that no one else gets to see.

“I’ve found interesting things in the theater,” he said. “There’s still arc rods in the vents in the theater. If you go up in the balcony and look in the back vent there’s still arc rods in there.”

He’s found evidence of childhood mischief as well. Hall said he discovered remnants of melted M&Ms in some of the old light fixtures, having been tossed up there by children playing basketball with their theater candy.

Hall’s perspective is like a time machine, giving him a glimpse at what going to the Romance Theater used to be like.

“Imagine how many GIs from World War II and grandmas and other family sat in the theater,” he said, adding that his own family had attended the theater for generations. “My aunt went down to the theater when she was in high school with all the girls, and they got the birds and the bees talk from their teachers.”

The Romance Theater was one of the few indoor gathering places in the community for many years. Hall said he wants to return that sense of community gathering to the theater, which is why he spends so much of his time laboring away.

“I just want to see it done and brought back to a beautiful state,” he said. “The city is doing a nice job trying to maintain it. They still have plans on doing things with the lobby. If we can do the interior and have a beautiful interior I think it makes it more possible to get grants from the state.

“It just needs to be preserved and the community to treasure it.”