Pueblo’s Grand Opera House, a history
Pueblo’s opera house was on par with the glorious halls of America’s major cities, from design to decor. It was eventually defeated by flames and a new era.
By Tasha Brandstatter
For a brief period of time between 1890 and 1922, Pueblo was home to one of the largest and most spectacular theaters between Kansas City and San Francisco, second only to the Tabor Opera House in Denver.
This enormous stone building, just one of a series of urban development projects in the city, was a symbol of Pueblo’s ambitions to be not just an economic powerhouse, but a cultural center. When the Grand Opera House burned down in 1922 no effort was made to rebuild, yet the ghostly echoes of the Opera House can still be felt in Pueblo nearly 100 years later.
Before YouTube, television, and movies, live entertainment was the only kind to be had, and theater troupes, minstrel shows, vaudeville acts, and more were common visitors to towns large and small. Theaters were an ordinary sight even in the most isolated of places.
Unfortunately, “theaters” were also notorious and frequently mentioned in the papers–not for the performances that went on, but for the nightly shootings, stabbings, beatings, and drunken escapades of both the audience and players. No respectable woman would ever be seen in a theater. “Opera houses,” on the other hand, were reasonably reputable, even if they might stage the same types of entertainment, and every city had to have one.
In 1887, Pueblo had an opera house at the corner of 7th and Main, built and owned by JR DeRemer. When it burned down in 1888, the city obviously needed a new opera house. But they didn’t want any old theater house. Pueblo wanted an opera house elaborate and technical enough to stage the most spectacular and extravagant theatrical productions of the day, with facilities to rival opera houses in New York, Chicago, and even Europe.
To design this impressive edifice, the financial backers of the new Grand Opera House Board (namely John and Mahlon Thatcher, Oliver HP Baxter, Andrew McClelland, JB Orman, Charles E Gast, TT Player, ER Holden, George Stimson and Frank Bingham) hired the Chicago architectural firm of Adler & Sullivan. Today, the firm is famous as one of the most progressive and modern architectural firms of the early 20th century. It helped to define the philosophy of “form follows function,” employed Frank Lloyd Wright before he struck out on his own, and one of the partners–Louis Sullivan–is widely considered the father of the modern skyscraper.
In 1888, however, Adler & Sullivan were just starting to make a name for themselves. Their largest project to date was the Auditorium Building in Chicago. It wasn’t yet completely finished, but had already garnered notice for fabulous acoustics and innovative design. And with the commission of the Pueblo Grand Opera House, Adler & Sullivan had their first chance to expand and make a name for themselves outside the Windy City. They were eager to please.
It just so happened that the Auditorium Building was very similar to what the Pueblo city leaders wanted in their Opera House: a multi-use building that included not just a theater, but offices and shops. The Auditorium Building was also constructed on waterlogged ground close to the shores of Lake Michigan; since the location of the Pueblo Grand Opera House was literally going to be on quicksand fed by water from the Fountain and Arkansas Rivers, Adler & Sullivan’s firm seemed like the ideal choice in terms of both vision and experience.
No respectable woman would ever be seen in a theater. “Opera houses,” on the other hand, were reasonably reputable, even if they might stage the same types of entertainment, and every city had to have one.
Although Dankmar Adler was involved in the project, and some evidence suggests that Frank Lloyd Wright contributed to the design, the true creative force behind the building was Louis Sullivan. Sullivan, who had spent time in Florence, Italy, modeled the Pueblo Opera House after a Florentine palazzo, with a stone façade, an arcaded first story topped by colonnades and cornices, and a campanile, or tower. The tower had an observation deck from which one could see Pike’s Peak and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, as well as an elevator. Behind the tower there was a rooftop garden that was open in the summer.
Following his first visit to Pueblo, Sullivan decided the exterior of the building should be made of Manitou sandstone, to reflect locality, as well as gray granite at the base. He also created a low relief pattern for the colonnades and arches that was, according to contemporary accounts, “designed to reflect the peculiar thorny effects of Colorado cacti.” This pattern was repeated in the stage curtains that, although made by the Chicago firm of Albert & Burridge, were conceived and designed by Sullivan.
When completed in October of 1890, the Pueblo Grand Opera House was the largest opera house in Colorado. It took up most of the entire block on 4th and Main, measuring 120 by 190 feet, and topped by the tower at about 131 feet. Its central feature was, of course, its theater, the entrance to which was framed by a massive projecting arch, carved with the words Grand Opera House. On either side of the arch were spandrels sporting the likenesses of William Shakespeare and Giuseppe Verdi.
Unfortunately, not many photographs of the interior of the Opera House survive, but it was both sumptuous and high tech, meant to recall the grandeur of a European palace while providing the latest in stage design and special effects. The interior colors were salmon, ivory, gray blue, and gold, but it was the gold that dominated. The proscenium was covered in gold leaf, as was much of the finishing decoration on the balcony, wall sconces, arches, and side walls. The ceiling was barrel vaulted and coffered, with each unit containing a single rosette. And all the windows were double-paned with stained glass on the interior. Since the Opera House used electric lights, the stained glass could be artificially illuminated at any time of the day or night.
The stage itself was built with the latest in mechanical and lighting equipment. It measured 78 feet wide and 33 feet deep, with a proscenium that was 30 feet high. There were 700 electric lights controlled by a light board, and twenty sinks, traps, and bridges for use on stage. The building also had what amounted to a central heating and cooling system, powered by fans and boilers.
But the theater, though the centerpiece of the Opera House, wasn’t the only element of the building. It also contained a branch of First National Bank, of which Mahlon Thatcher was president; a department store, a soda fountain, law offices, club rooms, a pool and billiard parlor, and a ballroom. The theater was also chameleon-esque, with flexible seating that could be switched in and out or rearranged depending on the circumstance. No one knows precisely how many people the theater could hold, but estimates run between 1000–1200.
The best season the Opera House had was probably its first, with the Duff Opera Company of Chicago opening the House with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. Other productions that year included Ben Hur, Madame Butterfly, Robin Hood, Faust, and Julius Caesar.
By far the biggest stage production in Pueblo, however, was undoubtedly Helena Modjeska’s Henry VIII, which was staged in March of 1893. Although little-known today, Modjeska was one of the most celebrated actresses of the 19th century, famous for playing tragic Shakespearean heroines. Her version of Henry VIII was the stuff of true theater, full of dramatic costumes and set design. Her company traveled with a 60-foot railway car loaded just with scenery alone. Several other famous Shakespearean actors played in Pueblo, as well, most notably Thomas W Keene and Robert B Mantell, who was the most renowned American theater actor of his generation (Mantell also got married in Pueblo, and hosted the wedding reception in the Opera House before that night’s performance of Macbeth).
But despite all the effort and money put into making the Pueblo Opera House fit for spectacular and breathtaking productions, it was rarely utilized in that capacity, especially following the silver crash of 1893.
The Grand Opera House, only just remodeled after the 1921 flood destroyed the ground floors, was a “roaring inferno.” The cause of the blaze was never discovered, but speculation laid the blame on a discarded cigarette from a dance held the night before.
Mostly the Opera House hosted prizefighting matches, burlesque shows, original stage productions by the Harrison Players, and, starting in the late 1910s, motion pictures. In fact, the one actor modern readers will recognize who came to Pueblo is Douglas Fairbanks, a native of Denver who joined the Frederick Warde Company after he was kicked out of high school.
When the fat lady sang, like any diva worthy of the name, she did not go quietly. As evidenced by the destruction of the DeRemer Opera House, fire was always a significant danger in theaters. Though Sullivan talked of making the Grand Opera House “as nearly fireproof as modern science and art can make it,” he made some significant compromises in fireproofing that eventually sealed the Opera House’s fate.
Most of those compromises were probably due to budget: Wood for stone in the rooftop garden, roof, and some supports, for example. But others seem almost criminally negligent, like the open stairwells at the back of the theater, which Sullivan favored because of their acoustical enhancements. These stairwells were a known fire danger at the time, and against fire regulations in most cities. Perhaps Sullivan thought the use of electrical lights minimized fire risk enough that it was worth it; in any case, it was really the wood roof and garden that served as the building’s Achilles’ heel.
In the very early morning hours of March 1, 1922, at around 1 am, a glow lit up the night sky. The Grand Opera House, only just remodeled after the 1921 flood destroyed the ground floors, was a “roaring inferno.” The cause of the blaze was never discovered, but speculation laid the blame on a discarded cigarette from a dance held the night before. The fire, once it got going, moved quickly. The roof collapsed at 1:50 am, and by 2:10 the entire building was a shell, with no floors intact. Yet the fire continued to rage due to two large gas mains that couldn’t be turned off–the records showing where they were located were destroyed in the previous year’s flood, and no one could find them.
Firefighters worked for more than 24 hours before the conflagration was completely put out.
The night was snowing and bitterly cold, -14 degrees with strong wind gusts, and despite the heat of the fire inside the Opera House, on the outside the below zero temperatures caused the water from the fire hoses to freeze immediately upon meeting the desiccated walls of the building. The effect, upon awakening, was fantastical: The Opera House looked like the ruins a fairy palace pulled from the depths of another world, dripping with sparkling, crystalline formations as one would see in a cave. It was such a scene of gothic beauty and drama that photos from that day were subsequently sold as memorial postcards.
The remains of the Grand Opera House sat, untouched, for nearly a year before it was torn down, eventually replaced by the Colorado Building. In many ways it had outlived its usefulness. The newer Memorial and City Halls were more modern and convenient venues for the civil and social functions once held in the Opera House, and gone were the days when lavish stage productions were the last word in culture and entertainment. Yet you can still see echoes of the Grand Opera House in the surviving buildings of that time: The red Manitou sandstone of the Union Depot, for example, or the arcades along the ground floor of the Thatcher Building.
The Grand Opera House may not have survived, but the vision she embodied for Pueblo lives on, hidden in the very foundations and architecture of the buildings that surrounded her.
