the building. I asked the realtor, ‘What’s behind these doors?’ And this is what I saw...”
THE FUGE WAS BORN.
The Fuge rhymes with “Huge” - and it is.
Perfectly round and 125-feet in diame- ter with a twenty-four foot high ceiling, The Fuge is inside one giant slab of poured concrete two-feet thick. To put this into perspective: during the Cold War you didn’t have to follow steps down into a sub-basement in order to be protected from the nuclear unfath- omable; you were already in a fallout shelter, as the 1950s-era sign out front indicates.
The space (not including other usage areas, which we’ll get to in a moment) is over 14,000-square feet. Fuge is short for Centrifuge - Bolted deep into the bedrock below the shiny flooring is a massive motor housing, and protruding out of that is a 50-foot metal arm like one from a giant crane or an erector set. In its entirety, this
apparatus weighs 180 tons. During its usage period, the centrifuge was capable of going from zero to 178MPH in seven seconds, and pro- ducing up to forty Gs. [In 1958, lab researcher R. Flanagan Gray with- stood 31.25gs for five seconds - a record that still stands today.]
Those 16,000 potential horses of power no longer have output, but thanks to Sam Craveno’s vision, there is still plenty of potential for impressive output from The Fuge.
Planning an event here takes one’s thinking out-of-the-box and into a venue with so many cool possibilities; unique extremes that cannot be found anywhere else in the country.
It can hold events of varying sizes from one- or two-hundred guests on up to a sit-down affair for 800, or a cocktail-style reception for over 1,200.
Being windowless is a problem for most any event location. At The Fuge, this restriction is a favorable attribute for attendees; the long stream of bil- lowy white curtains that line the con- crete walls create a soft and subtle backdrop for the phalanx of strobes
and pulsing lights Sam has set up to create spectacular background visu- als.
Two 40-foot screens can project a movie, a Powerpoint presentation, a company logo, or act as a field for a laser show (which would be right at home in this spacey, futuristic setting). The motor room in the center of the event space can double as a bar. “We’ve placed a DJ on top of it,” Sam recounts, “and we have put bands up there, as well. It makes for a nice centerpiece to the room. We also have had guests of honor [like the bride and groom or bar/bat mitzvah celebrants] take center stage on top of the fixture.”
The circuitousness of The Fuge com- bined with its vastness lends itself to countless event configurations. “Being perfectly rounded gives attendees a natural path - an ongoing flow - so guests will never get lost in corners, or tucked into nooks that are away from the action.”
The action Sam is referring to comes, in part, from his killer stereo system. Turned up nominally and impressive acoustics resound through the vast
Mid-Atlantic EVENTS Magazine 81
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