REPRIEVE FOR THE MET

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31142, 19 August 1966, Page 11

REPRIEVE FOR THE MET

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW YORK, August 18. The 83-year-old Metropolitan Open House got a reprieve yesterday when a culturally-minded millionaire deposited a 100.000-dollar cheque with the county clerk minutes before a deadline which would have paved the way for the opera house's demolition. The Supreme Court judge,

Mr Arthur Klein set the deadline on Tuesday and announced that unless the money was paid by 4 p.m. yesterday he would lift an order which had stayed demolition of the building. The cheque from Mr Huntington Hartford was half the amount requested by the court as security against losses by Keystone Associates. which has leased the site for 50 years from the owners of the building. The other 100,000 dollars were paid earlier into the ac-

count of the old Met Opera Corporation. Keystone claims that the cost of maintaining the building, estimated to be worth eight million dollars, is 7000 dollars a day. The building was abandoned by the Metropolitan Opera when it moved to new quarters. The group trying to save the old Met now has six months to try to find the necessary money to buy the site and run the building independently.