Ashlynn Mahan (left) takes her drink from Coddiwomple Coffee House in Franklin.
Bridgette Fox/Journal-Courier
Why do two geologists run a coffee shop in Franklin? To pay the bills for their theater.
The Coddiwomple Coffee House, the logo of which is a gnome running with a coffee mug in hand, is a small coffee shop at 100 Main St. that opened April 26. It serves coffee, dirty soda, ice cream and breakfast burritos.
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In the back of the shop is a stage, a piano and tables with seats. That’s the theater portion of the building.
Ginny Walsh opened the theater, Red Wall Theater House, with her husband, Matt Walsh. The building functions as a satellite office for Esprit de Corps Academy, a Jacksonville nonprofit that provides free music lessons to children. Ginny Walsh is a board member for the nonprofit.
Ginny Walsh talks about the upstairs of Red Wall Theater House. The building originally was built by the Order of the Odd Fellows.
Bridgette Fox/Journal-Courier
“The cafe, in theory, is what’s keeping the lights on, keeping the place warm so that we can make sure that the kids are getting exposure to the arts free of charge,” Matt Walsh said.
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Originally built in the early 1900s, the building was a meeting place for the Odd Fellows fraternal organization. The Walshes were surprised when they began renovation work and found the windows still were intact.
Still, to keep the building up and running — and to continue renovation work on the upper levels — they needed some income from the space.
“The building renovations were certainly more expensive than I thought they were going to be,” Ginny Walsh said.
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They’re considering a menu expansion after the cafe next door, the Green Wall, closed down. The theater’s name is a reference to the cafe.
“My 11-year-old was standing there, and he’s like, ‘Well, if that’s the Green Wall, this is the Red Wall,’” she said.
Ginny Walsh (left) and her husband, Matt Walsh, talk about plans they have for their building, which houses Coddiwomple Coffee House and Red Wall Theater House.
Bridgette Fox/Journal-Courier
Running the theater house is a passion project, Ginny Walsh said. When she moved back to Franklin, her hometown, the theater program she grew up with, run by Diana Bassi, wasn’t around anymore. She wanted to change that.
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“The Bassies are kind of what was driving this whole vision because I wanted to recreate that for my kids,” Ginny Walsh said. “We moved back about five years ago, and it wasn’t here, and I couldn’t stand it.”
While theater and choir are “taking off,” the Walshes likely won’t stop there, Ginny Walsh said. There’s interest in other topics, like Dungeons and Dragons, yoga, stage makeup and, possibly, magic.
“We’ve got a great network of people who are insanely capable of all of these things, that are helping us out,” she said. “And we’re just getting started.”