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Name A Seat At New Rochelle Library's Ossie Davis Theater

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. – You can put your stamp on the newly refurbished Ossie Davis Theater by purchasing a personalized name plate for one of its seats, the New Rochelle Public Library Foundation announced.

The new seats being installed in the Ossie Davis Theater will have personalized nameplates on the armrests.

The new seats being installed in the Ossie Davis Theater will have personalized nameplates on the armrests.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the New Rochelle Public Library

Individuals, organizations and businesses can become a permanent part of the theater by naming a seats or one of the library vestibules as part of the foundations Name-a-Seat fundraiser. The fundraiser runs for the next six months. 

“The Ossie Davis Theater offers hundreds of cultural events every year, and this is a wonderful opportunity for PTAs, neighborhood associations and other community and civic groups that represent our diverse community to support the arts and be represented in one of the city’s most valued cultural centers,” Dr. Cheryl Archbald, co-chair of the New Rochelle Public Library Foundation's fundraising committee, said in a prepared statement.

The foundation gave more than $106,000 to help remodel the theater. The balance came from a New York State Public Library Construction Grant and the library’s 2010 capital improvement bond.

The theater’s new layout includes 138 individual seats set in 10 rows. About 124 seats are available for naming. Donors may select a message to put on the nameplate: up to three lines of 27 characters each, including spaces and punctuation.

For $300, donors can name a seat in the fifth through 10th rows; for $1,000, you can name one of 38 premium seats in the second through fourth rows.

“Perhaps 30 members of a scout troop, book club or sports team will each contribute $10 to name a seat, or a graduating senior class will name a seat as a class gift or as a way to show their appreciation for a favorite teacher,” Archbald said in the release.    

Supporters who wish to select a seat to be named and donate electronically may use the foundation’s interactive online Select-a-Seat tool at nrplfoundation.org/ossiedavistheater.

Donors can also name entire rows of seats at a discounted rate or be recognized on high-profile naming plaques inside the theater, in the vestibule adjacent to the refurbished Memorial Highway entrance or in the vestibule near the Lawton Street entrance.

For more information, contact Betsy Kravitz, co-chair of the New Rochelle Public Library Foundation's fundraising committee, at atbmk926@aol.com. All seat and vestibule naming is on a first-come, first-served basis. A donor appreciation event is scheduled for October 2013.

For more information on naming seats in the Ossie Davis Theater, call the New Rochelle Public Library Foundation at 914-632-7878, ext. 1600, or email info@nrplfoundation.org. Brochures with seat-naming order forms are available at the Library.

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