Opera House

Fennimore’s ‘opera house’ was a very basic two story wooden building with tin cladding on the north and east walls. It was constructed sometime before 1894, and sat at the NE corner of what was then Lincoln Street and Spring Street (now 12th Street). The Opera House was located upstairs, and two storefronts occupied the ground floor.

Both spaces are vacant on both the 1899 and 1905 maps, but the 1912 map shows ‘Moving Pictures’ in the northern storefront. It may be that at some point this theatre moved upstairs, as the Reel Journal of November 28, 1925 lists B.F. Belcher operating the Opera House as a movie theatre. It is not mentioned again, and a much more substantial theatre was constructed across the street in 1928 (the Fenway Theatre, which has its own listing). Belcher was operating that theater by 1939.

This building was long ago demolished, and the intersection redesigned to accommodate US 18. The current structure appears to have been a gas station, and may be from the 1950’s.

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