Chuck Berry, Bobby Blue Bland, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Mahalia Jackson, Etta James, B.B. King, Patty LaBelle, Little Richard Penniman, Ike and Tina Turner, T-Bone Walker, Jackie Wilson. Cowboy Copas, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow and Ernest Tubb. Joe Marshall and his Rovin Ramblers. And Jerry the Bear. Some including Jerry are long gone. Some went on to become great rocknroll, R&B, gospel or country music stars, and some are still playing memories from half a century ago. But together they form a link in Bowling Greens history: They all played to local crowds at what was the Quonset Auditorium, recently bought and soon to be demolished by Bowling Green Municipal Utilities for a water treatment plant expansion. Two half-moon-shaped metal buildings sit at the corner of Old Louisville Road and U.S. 31-W By-Pass. The larger, for the last three decades the home of Bale Tire & Auto Center, was from its 1946 construction until 1959 probably the most popular venue for music, wrestling and other events in Warren County. As such, the Quonset Auditorium served as a historic cultural crossroads in popular music and local civil rights history. Three members of the Bowling Green band Joe Marshall and his Rovin’ Ramblers built the Quonset Auditorium in fall 1946. Brothers Joe and Kenny Marshall, Floyd Dunn and their fellow musicians played earlier shows at the National Guard Armory. When it burned down, the band looked for another place to perform. Amber Ridington, now an independent folklorist in British Columbia, wrote a history of the Quonset Auditorium in 2002 as her thesis for a masters degree in folk studies at Western Kentucky University. Her work was very complete and accurate, Marshall said. She did a real good job with it, he said. Ridington drew on oral accounts from musicians, audience members and citizens of that era, and yearbooks, the Daily News and old posters to document the buildings place in history. She also transcribed Marshalls panel discussion at the 2001 Kentucky Folklife Festival, when he described the buildings genesis. The Marshalls and Dunn first pitched a tent on Eighth Avenue for the summer; Cab Calloway played there, and some Grand Ole Opry stars, Marshall told the folklife festival audience. When a summer storm blew off the top, they dubbed it the Open Air Arena and kept playing. But by October it got too cold to continue. So Floyd and Kenny and I decided at that time there might be a little money in this thing, Marshall said. Believe it or not, the bank trusted us with $10,000, and we built the Quonset. Quonset huts are named for the naval base at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, where 160,000 of them were manufactured as quick-to-assemble buildings for the military during World War II. After the war, Quonset huts including the two by the riverfront were sold as military surplus. In recent years, similar buildings have attracted attention from preservationists nationwide; because they were intended as temporary structures, relatively few have survived as intact as the two at the corner of the Bypass and Old Louisville Road. With a little personal skill in construction, the men had little trouble in assembling the prefabricated building, Marshall recalled. They opened the Quonset Auditorium in the fall of 1946, but didnt start advertising it until the following year, Marshall said. Soon wrestling matches and roller skating filled the 700-seat auditorium, and they rented it out to the Mormon Church every Sunday. We just gave them a key to the place, he said. We knew we could trust the Mormons. Then there was Jerry the bear. Marshall owned the bear, kept him tied outside the Quonset Auditorium to attract tourists, and used him in the bands stage act for several years. But one day Jerry got too rough in playing with Marshall, and he sold the big bruin to a farmer in Woodburn, Marshall told the folklife festival crowd. The bear escaped by gnawing through the oak wall of a stable, and the sheriff hunted Jerry down and shot him. A local barbecue cook grilled up some bear steaks, but Marshall didnt partake. I dont mind telling you, I, I see his ghost now, he said. Now, every so often in my dreams, Ill see a ghost of Jerry the bear. Marshall and the Rovin Ramblers played weekly at the Quonset Auditorium, with or without Jerry. But soon local black music promoter Upton Roundtree began booking bands. It soon became known as the Most Happening Place in Town, hosting a wedding, roller skating and union meetings as well as musical acts. It was open for anybody, Marshall said. If you had $25 you could rent the Quonset one night and have what you wanted to have. Before the federal interstate highway system was inaugurated in 1965, U.S. 31-W was part of the main north-south route known as Dixie Highway, according to Ridingtons research. Along that road ran the postwar tour circuit of many R&B, gospel and country music acts. For country stars, the Quonset Auditorium was a prime stop on their road to Nashville, and for black performers it served as a bridge between the white community and theirs. Its position not only on Dixie Highway but at the edge of Bowling Greens historically black Shake Rag neighborhood made it an early focal point for racial integration in Bowling Green, Ridington found. A small side door, bypassing the hamburger restaurant that filled the front section of the Quonset Auditorium, served as the segregated black-only entrance. But big names like Ray Charles were enough to attract a mixed crowd; in a reverse of the usual situation, whites would pack the small balcony. Eventually, even this separation dissolved: By the mid-1950s, musicians recalled, it was accepted for black and white players to share the stage at the Quonset, even if they had to spend the night in separate hotels. Joe Marshalls band teamed up with the black House Rockers to form the first permanently integrated band in the region. Wrestling played a much larger role in the auditoriums popularity than Ridington brought out, but thats understandable because its practically impossible to track down traveling ex-wrestlers from half a century ago, Marshall said. The Marshall brothers, who bought out Dunns interest in the building several years before, closed down the auditorium in 1959 around the time they got married and stopped touring regularly, Marshall recalled. They sold it in 1963, and it saw new use as a grocery store and a beer distributorship. In 1972, Bale Oil Company bought the Quonset Auditorium and the smaller Quonset hut beside it. The smaller building, the recent home of the River Walk Grill, was also Marshalls handiwork. He and his brother put it up to make a little extra money a few years after building the Quonset Auditorium, Marshall said. We built that one too, he said. We built it for a welder. He ran a welding shop out of there for several years. Later, local electronic equipment suppliers Randolph, Hale & Meredith rented the smaller building until they moved into their current downtown headquarters, Marshall said. Ridington noted at the end of her study that Bales refusal to list the buildings on the National Register of Historic Places and the potential BGMU expansion left the Quonset huts threatened, even as the area experienced stirrings of revival. RiverWalk Park opened across Old Louisville Road from the Quonset Auditorium in August 2002, the first piece of an ambitious project to revitalize the riverfront and downtown Bowling Green part of which is to preserve the areas historic buildings. At the parks opening, the entertainment was Joe Marshall and his Rovin Ramblers, still playing after more than half a century, just yards from the auditorium they built. Seeking to serve the increased riverfront traffic the park brought, Jimmy Nally opened the River Walk Grill in the smaller Quonset hut at the start of July 2003, renting by the month. Hed run a restaurant equipment business out of it since 1997, and so didnt bother to get a lease from the Bales after six years of occupancy. Nally sank $40,000 into the restaurant, he said, building a patio and commissioning a mural of Bowling Green scenes. But after a month of operation, Bale Oil Company sold that building and the Quonset Auditorium to BGMU for $775,000. Nally was told to have all equipment and signs out by Aug. 24.The utility has closed on the purchase, but wont take possession until November, BGMU President Larry Miller said. The buildings will probably be torn down within a year, he said. Ultimately it will be new water treatment facilities, Miller said. It will depend on the design of the expansion as to what will be located there. Robin Zeigler, the historic preservation planner for the City-County Planning Commission of Warren County, has sent letters to BGMU asking the utility to preserve the buildings. But an environmental assessment of the site found traces of oil that probably seeped through the septic systems the structures share. That will probably require four feet of soil to be dug out from under the building sites, BGMU board chairman David Coverdale said. It also makes demolition of the buildings a near-certainty. I think the remediation will demand that, Miller said. We are working with a group of advisers to see if theres some way we can commemorate the historical significance of the buildings. The utility has been interested in the property for more than 10 years. The vacant land on the other side of the water treatment plant was too low-lying for the planned expansion, he said. Dorian Walker, chairman of the historic preservation board, said he would back efforts to preserve the Quonset huts somehow. If there is a way to save them, I think it would be a wonderful thing, Walker said. This is unique to the architecture of the city and this region. But the Quonset Auditorium is special not only because of its design but because of its place in musical history, he said. Its easy to forget that the buildings now labeled as historic were, only a few years ago, considered just a few more old buildings, Walker said theyre only recognized as significant if they survive. We just need to be very cautious of the seduction of tearing old down to build new, he said. Once such venues vanish, a piece of local history is irrevocably lost. As the riverfront redevelops, the buildings become more significant, Walker said. What a perfect thing to keep something thats part of the Warren County cultural heritage, he said. But how to preserve them is a problem, since BGMU plans to build anew on the land. Im not sure that they can be dismantled and restructured on a different site, Miller said. Former owner Marshall would also like to see at least the auditoriums survival assured. Ive had several say to me that theyd like to see that preserved as a historical place in our city, and rebuilt as a place for meetings or dances or programs or whatever, he said. I guess we have no control over it. I know I dont anymore.