Oh if the walls at 816 E. Broadway could talk. Or rather, the ceiling.

For decades, the old Broadway Theater, which opened in 1915 near downtown Louisville, lived the life of a performance hall as school-age children, Christian bands and 70's era rockers such as Ozzy Osbourne took the stage.

Today, the building is a modern co-working space known as Launch Louisville, where tech companies dedicated to things like drones, music videos and silent discos operate.

Standing in the heart of that modern office, I never would have guessed at its glittery past. The building hasn't acted as a theater since the 1970s, and for more than 30 years, it served as a showroom for an office furniture company. Launch Louisville, which was founded by Walter Zausch, moved in after Office Resources Inc. relocated to the East End in 2018.

But tucked above the drop ceiling at Launch Louisville, the masonic, vaudeville relic from 1915 sleeps quietly, and you can still access it through theco-working space's second floor.

Stepping into what’s left of the old theater just east of downtown Louisville feels like walking into an echo from the past and a funhouse all at the same time.

The architecture and detailed lions in the ornate plaster woven around the stage distract from the sea of insulation and ductwork where the audience seats should be.

It’s a marvel. It’s ghostly.

And despite that drop ceiling that rose up and took over the orchestra area like a sold-out concert sometime in the 1980s — it’s all still there.

I arrived at 816 E. Broadway in late December at the invitation of Dave Thomas, Launch Louisville's general manager. He met me a few steps and a doorway past the old box office at a long conference style table in the lobby of the co-working and entrepreneurship non-profit.

He’s charged with greeting the 86 individual members from the 53 companies that work out of the building and directing people through the maze of modern desks and offices in the space.

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In turn, he's also the unofficial tour guide of the old theater. But before we get to that, let's take a quick intermission.

This isn't a story about how the theater is coming back to life, and there aren't any plans on the books to rejuvenate that early 20th-century stage. There's no encore for this theater.

Rather, this is a tale about how a modern co-working space serves as a strange sarcophagus to the vaudeville era and early 20th century Louisville.

While the building's original Gothic facade is still intact outside, life inside 816 E. Broadway looks and sounds a lot different than it would have when Broadway Theater first opened 105 years ago as a performance hall.

We've gone from costumes and scenery to bourbon science and switched from electric guitars to women's support groups. But those transitions took a lot more than the rise and fall of a curtain in a traditional set change.

Records of the theater's earliest shows are seemingly nonexistent. Old Courier Journal clippings from the 1930s, nearly 20 years after it opened, show that during its stint as a movie house, children could get a free 5-cent Baby Ruth bar for winning a paddle ball contest. When theCatholic Theater Guild purchased the building in 1960 for $25,000, young thespians dressed up like munchkins for the "Wizard of Oz" and prayerful groups packed in for Christian concerts.

In its final years in the 1970s, the building saw headliners like Ozzy Osborne, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Santana under the name "The Mad Hatter."

But by the early 1980s, the old Broadway Theater was unoccupied and slated for demolition. Instead, at some point, that drop ceiling went up, and the furniture company moved in.

Ultimately, the music stopped, but the theater lived on silently behind the scenes as customers spent more than two decades testing out office chairs and sizing up new desks at ORI.

Now that Launch Louisville calls it home, if you sit at that long conference table in the entryway, you're going to meet a wide array of Louisville's up-and-coming talent.

In a way, it's not all that unlike the dancers, musicians and singers that took the stage in the building's earliest years, but these folks are creatives and business people, not performers.

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For example, most days, you can find McCallister Cox at Launch Louisville. He works for Distijl, a custom bourbon company that personalizes bottles and gathers Myers Briggs test-type data to determine what flavor profiles their clients like best.

He can use preferences like whether you're a fan of cilantro or if you can feel the seam on your socks when you walk to pinpoint the best bourbon for you.

Or, perhaps, you'll meet Vernice Mitchell. She hosts SOW365's "Women of Intent" groups at Launch Louisville. Twice a month her nonprofit gathers 15 to 30 women for a group therapy session of sorts where they learn to cope with the daily stresses of being a woman.

There are the office-types, too — and there are a lot of them among the entrepreneurs, non-profit groups and leadership firms — but once they clock out for the day, you'll likely find Clayton Luce and a cohort of creatives in the production studio in the east half of the building. He's a producer and a filmmaker with Darkstar TV.

Sometimes he's doing interviews for an upcoming documentary on Kentucky native and world-renowned beat generation poet Ron Whitehead. Other times, he's working on an episode of "Ville TV Live," which he described as the MTV of the 90s reborn.

There's no shortage of projects that come out of 816 E. Broadway's modern persona. Creativity and content still thrive in it even though old theater has a new life.

But I was there to see where the theater's original talent played.

So Thomas and I walked up the side stairwell to a small landing on the floor above Launch Louisville. To my left, I saw a modern conference room that fits in with the co-working vibe downstairs.

To my right, there was an old oak door with a regal brass knob. With one turn, we rolled back the clock to 1915 — away from the support groups, the custom bourbon bottles and the production studio — and we stepped out onto theater's balcony.

It’s the kind of place you need a flashlight — the lights and any sort of utilities left sometime after Ozzy and Pink Floyd did.

There’s no way to access the stage itself. You can’t wade across the insulation topped ceiling and step in what would be the spotlight. You can’t settle into those box seats with a monocle and a pocket watch like their earliest guests would have.

You can, however, climb up the chair-less stadium-style seating area to where two antique-looking projectors still keep their post over the stage.

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My unofficial tour guide admits he's not an expert, but he suspects they're original to the theater. They're large enough that moving them out would be impossible, so in theory, the room was built around them.

I peered out the projector's hole and looked out on the stage just as the operator would have half a century ago. And I really struggled to put words to the feeling I had as I looked at that old, empty space.

Later, Cox and Luce put it better than I ever could have.

Yes, there was magic on that stage when it was the Broadway Theater, and even though it's silent now, it still breeds creative energy for everyone in the building.

"It was a creative space before we walked into it, and it’s a creative space when we leave," Cox told me.

It doesn't matter that the building has gone from young children learning to follow the Yellow Brick Road or Pink Floyd singing another Brick in the Wall to taste profiles, documentaries and women's support groups.

In a way, what's above that old drop ceiling still speaks to everyone that works beneath it.

"There’s something about working in a space," Luce told me. "It adds a weight to your work. There’s a pride in the building and the pride in the community because you are an extension of that history."

Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you've got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description — she wants to hear from you. Say hello at mmenderski@courier-journal.com or 502-582-7137. Follow along on Instagram and Twitter @MaggieMenderski.