Circa 1939 📜

Mr. Casaday started here in 1939. He went away to school, went to William and Mary, got his drama degree and wanted to do a professional scene in New York, but his parents lived here and his mom wasn’t well. So he gave that up and came home to live with them. They lived on Colfax in one of those great big, beautiful homes.

A painting of a young Mr. Casaday

He took care of his mother and his aunt for a long time and ended up with a job at Central as their drama person. He also taught at Riley. Over the years, he amassed a rather large costume collection, most of it that he made. He was an outstanding seamstress, and he never used a pattern or anything like that. He just looked at you and made it.

He made all these costumes for his productions at Central and Riley. There used to be an organization called Presbyterian Players, which was his adult drama group that was based out of the Presbyterian Church. He made costumes for that and shared these costumes back and forth among all these groups.

He never imagined anything like an organized collection, it was all done for his own productions.

Over the years, the collection began to grow. From the ‘30s until his retirement in 1974, he was collecting costumes. That’s where we got a lot of the vintage pieces we have now.

The building just West of the Central Apartments today housed his sewing room, and the costumes went in the basement. They called it the “tomb” and it was susceptible to water so if you look at those cabinets with our vintage stuff, you can still see the water damage today.

Boxes & Bins 📦

In 1974, the school corporation had possession of all his costumes and the lady who was in charge of the high schools at that point asked Jean Savarese, who had sewn for Mr. Casaday, if she’d be interested in taking over the collection.

She agreed, and the collection stayed with the school corporation. In that time, the main purpose was to help supply the schools or local theater people with costumes. They used the costumes from Mr. Casaday and made a few other things, but overall there wasn’t a lot of creating going on after his retirement.