URBANA — A historic Urbana home that served as a student-run DIY music space has shut its doors.
The Mirror, located at 508 West Elm Street, has played host to “house shows” for the past four years. The house was one of many spaces in an ever-evolving music scene in the C-U area that put on local DIY concerts in basements, living rooms and backyards.
In April, The Mirror hosted a set that would end up being the last show in the house. Nick Owen, a resident of The Mirror and member of rock band “The Crown, Victoria,” recalls being outside the venue when concertgoers began to pour out of the living room.
“People were saying the floor was caving in,” Owen said. “It wasn’t immediately obvious, but when you went to the basement and looked at the ceiling, a bunch of the floor joists were severely cracked.”
The Mirror had been set to close their doors at the end of the semester in May, but those plans were abruptly cut short.
Since December 2021, tenants at The Mirror have hosted over 100 bands in their living room.
The first residents to host shows named the space “The Mirror,” adorning the living room with a large decorative mirror as the centerpiece behind the stage.
The Mirror brought in bands from all over the country to play music for a community with a rich musical history.
Siggi Prendergast, a dance major at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who ran booking for The Mirror, said that after the flooring issue arose, the group had plans for two more shows. One was relocated to a space in downtown Champaign called The Frustum, during which a candlelit vigil was held for the floor of The Mirror.
Prendergast said attendees enjoyed peaceful, ambient sets, unlike the music that broke the floor of the Elm Street home.
“After our floor depressed by one inch, I realized that I absolutely could not hold any shows like that at the lovely Elm Street venue we usually host them at,” he said. “But given how long The Mirror was running… there was essentially no choice but to continue” with the event at The Frustum.
Owen said that The Mirror had been his favorite venue since he was a freshman at the U of I. He attributes some of the venue’s success to the DIY nature of the shows themselves.
“The process of putting on shows… everything is lowkey thrown together,” Owen said. “But I mean, it gets the job done, and I feel like that dynamic is part of the charm.”
Prendergast said the communal environment of house shows are one of the reasons they’re popular among students.
“I think when most people view pits from the outside they see it as some sort of violent excess, some sort of chaos. But… when you’re in the audience, there’s a sense of being communally held by the other people around you,” he said.
Owen said he hopes that next semester, new spaces will take on the task of hosting shows to fill the void left by The Mirror’s closure.