The Tabor Opera House is an opera house in Leadville, Colorado. Opened in 1879, The building has been designated a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. [1]
The Tabor Opera House is an opera house in Leadville, Colorado. Opened in 1879, The building has been designated a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. [1]
Built by Horace Tabor, who went on to become the town's first mayor, it was the most costly structure in Colorado at the time, with materials being brought by wagons from Denver. [2] The massive three-story opera house, constructed of stone, brick, and iron, was called "Leadville's finest brick structure". [3] A 1935 newspaper article stated its cost to be "something under $75,000". [4]
The Tabor Opera House opened on November 20, 1879, [2] [5] [6] with its first production being a comedy called The Serious Family. [7]
A March 1880 newspaper announcement advertised Kate Claxton and her husband Chas A. Stevenson in a double-bill running six nights. In April 1880 the program included Minnie Palmer in Minnie Palmer's Boarding School. [8] On June 29, 1880, the funeral of Texas Jack Omohundro was held on the stage at the Tabor. [9]
Following the 1893 collapse in the price of silver, after the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, [10] Tabor was forced to sell the Leadville opera house for $32,000 USD. [11] The new owner, Algernon Weston, owned the opera house until his death in 1897. In 1901 the building was sold to the local Elks society, who reopened it in 1902 as the Elks Opera House. [12] [7]
In 1936 a fire broke out in the building's bar, caused by a cigarette dropped into the upholstery by a patron. [13]
In 1955 the building was sold for $20,000 USD to Evelyn Furman, a resident of Leadville. [14] [15] Furman maintained the building, opening it occasionally for tours and performances, until her death in 2011. [15]
In 2016 the city of Leadville purchased the building for $600,000 USD. [16] The renovation of the building is overseen by a private non-profit society, the Tabor Opera House Preservation Foundation. [16]
In 2020 Dr. Wendy Rae Waszut-Barrett of Historic Stage Services LLC, documented hundreds of stage settings delivered to at the Tabor Opera House in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of the 19th century stage settings were even stored above the auditorium ceiling, lowered to the stage floor for assembly and cataloguing. [1] [2] There are currently fourteen theatre collections identified at the Tabor Opera House, scenery and stage machinery dating from 1879 to 1902. Dr. Waszut-Barrett published many of these onsite discoveries at www.drypigment.net.
Leadville is a statutory city that is the county seat, the most populous community, and the only incorporated municipality in Lake County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 2,633 at the 2020 census. It is situated at an elevation of 10,158 feet (3,096 m). Leadville is the third highest incorporated city in the United States behind Alma and Montezuma and is surrounded by two of the tallest peaks in the state.
Davis Hanson Waite was an American politician. He was a member of the Populist Party, and he served as the eighth Governor of Colorado from 1893 to 1895.
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Horace Austin Warner "Haw" Tabor, also known as The Bonanza King of Leadville and The Silver King, was an American prospector, businessman, and Republican politician. His success in Leadville, Colorado's silver mines made him one of the wealthiest men in Colorado. He purchased more mining enterprises throughout Colorado and the Southwestern United States, and he was a philanthropist. After the collapse in the silver market during the Panic of 1893, Tabor was financially devastated. He lost most of his holdings, and he labored in the mines. In his last year, he was the postmaster of Denver.
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John Sewell "Jack" Langrishe, popularly known as the "Comedian of the Frontier", was an Irish-American actor and impresario who travelled extensively throughout the American West and later in life became one of the first State Senators of Idaho.
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The Leadville Historic District is in the mining town of Leadville, Colorado. The National Historic Landmark District includes 67 mines in the mining district east of the city up to the 12,000 foot level, and a defined portion of the village area. It was designated in 1961. Then, when the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) program was started in 1966, Leadville's National Historic District was included in its first day's listings, along with all other existing National Historic Landmarks. The NRHP district was later expanded, adding a number of structures along the Harrison Avenue corridor, and making them eligible for historic preservation grants and tax subsidies, too.
Healy House Museum was the Leadville, Colorado home built in 1878 by mining engineer and city father August R. Meyer for his bride, Emma. It was purchased in 1888 by Daniel Healy (1857-1912), who operated a boarding house with his cousin Nellie Healy. An immigrant from Ireland, Healy served Leadville as a mail carrier and later assistant postmaster. He subsequently started several successful businesses and represented Leadville in Colorado's state legislature from 1903 to 1905.
August Robert Meyer was an American mining engineer, founding organizer of Leadville, Colorado, and developed the park and boulevard system for Kansas City, Missouri as first president of the Commission of Parks.
Elizabeth McCourt Tabor, better known as Baby Doe, was the second wife of Colorado pioneer businessman Horace Tabor. Her rags-to-riches and back to rags again story made her a well-known figure in her own day, and inspired an opera and a Hollywood movie based on her life.
Martin J. "Mart" Duggan was a gunfighter of the American Old West who, although mostly unknown today, was at the time one of the more feared men in the west. He is listed by author Robert K. DeArment, in his book "Deadly Dozen", as one of the most underrated gunmen of the Old West.
Temple Israel was erected at 201 West 4th Street in Leadville, Colorado, during the summer of 1884 in less than two months. The Temple Israel building is a rare example of a frontier synagogue.
Caroline Bancroft (1900–1985) was a journalist and performed in the Ziegfeld Follies. She is known for the books and booklets that she wrote about Colorado's history and its pioneers. In 1990, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
John T. Gunnell served in the Colorado House of Representatives from 1881 to 1883 during the Third General Assembly. He has the distinction of being the first African American to serve in the Colorado Legislature. He chaired the committee on federal relations, was a member of committee on elections and apportionment as well as the penitentiary committee He represented Arapahoe County, Colorado, which at that time included Denver
The Tabor Grand Opera House, not to be confused with the Tabor Opera House of Leadville, was a Denver opera house and theatre built and subsidized by the silver magnate Horace Tabor and his first wife Augusta Tabor.