Stillwater Opera House - Stillwater, OK
N 36° 06.747 W 097° 03.466
14S E 674810 N 3998167
Today home of the Antique Mall, the dramatically modified Stillwater Opera House is at 116 E 9th Ave, Stillwater, OK, with a plaque by the door that reveals its identity under that newer façade.
Waymark Code: WMYXDZ
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 08/06/2018
Views: 5
There's not much meat and potatoes to this one:
Erected 1900 as the original
opera house for the
city of Stillwater
Dedicated by
Stillwater Homebuilders Assn.
and Stillwater Arts and
Humanities Council
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Be sure to check out the Web site (see link) for some interesting photos and background, and a 2018 article (preserved offline, available upon request should the article be removed) in Stillwater Living magazine is great reading. Louis J. Jardot,
along with his brother-in-law, James Blouin, had this building constructed as the railroad brought life to Stillwater. Jardot was a mason and brick manufacturer, and this $12,000 three-story brick and sandstone building used material from his plant, standing out from downtown's older and smaller wooden buildings.
The website notes that a fire escape on the west side was useful if guests needed to use the outhouses. While there was no indoor plumbing, this may have been the first business in Stillwater to have electric lighting. Just a few years after the opera house was built, a bowling alley was constructed below the theater, and a furniture store and a grocery store flanked the main entrance. The opera house's tin roof made this a good location to launch fireworks on the Fourth of July, as there would be little fire hazard, and the high location made it easy to see the fireworks from miles away. In fact, just three days after opening, the locals were treated to a spectacular fireworks show.
Along came motion pictures, and as interest in live performances waned, by 1913, the opera house was evolving into a movie theater. By 1919, it was the Isis Theatre, but by 1932, the occupant was a small church. In 1946, the building was re-purposed as a furniture store, and today, it is home to a popular antique store.
There is a beautiful small scale model of the opera house at the Sheerar Museum of Stillwater History where one can get a look at the opera house in color, rather than being content with what we see from contemporary black and white photographs.