Park Opera House, Grand Junction, Colorado 1892 [1912] Ute Avenue between 4th and 5th Streets Grand Junction Mesa Colorado USA Built in 1892, it was located between 4th and 5th Streets on the North side of Ute Avenue, facing Whitman Park (on the current location of the the Museum of Western Colorado). It hosted plays and other traveling acts. According to local historian, professor Don MacKendrick, it was constructed in part from an old livery stable at the site. The Grand Junction News described the opera house at the time: “The Park Opera House is rapidly crowding work on their opera house. This will be the finest structure of that class in Western Colorado, except the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen. It is a splendid brick building 70 by 130 feet with auditorium and gallery. It will have a seating capacity of 750, 500 in the auditorium and 250 in the gallery. The stage is 35 by 70 feet and is provided with dressing rooms. Its height to the rigging loft is 45 feet. This enables the curtain to be advanced without rolling. A Chicago firm is now preparing a full set of scenery and a member of the company will go to Chicago in a few days to select the furnishings.” According to a Daily Sentinel article about the opera house (undated and as quoted by historian Michael Husband in his lecture, “The West in 1883”): “In the upper balconies were those, not so affluent in worldy goods but always rich in appreciation, applause, or hissing disapproval.” It closed sometime in the 1900’s or 1910’s, with the advent of moving pictures (which it was unequipped to show). Before the Opera House was torn down in the 1930's to make way for the new C.D. Smith Drugstore headquarters, large old show posters, called three sheets, were taken from the basement and used for decor in the Red Trunk clothing store. place:349 Grand Junction, Colorado yes yes