The Old Opera House
by:  James Hales

One of the most interesting buildings in Rogers is the Opera House located above Dixieland Shoes at the southwest corner of Walnut and First Streets. The auditorium was the center of local entertainment from the time it was built in the late 1890s until moving picture theaters became popular about 1920. Many traveling theater groups, musical shows, speakers, politicians, and local amateurs performed there, including Betty Blake (later Mrs. Will Rogers).

As attendance at performances declined in the early 1920s, an attempt was made to revive the Opera House by converting the stage into a boxing ring. An ad in the Rogers Daily News on February 7, 1924, advertised two boxing matches and one wrestling match, with general admission seats for 50 cents and ringside seats for $1.25. C.T. Mullins was the custodian and curtain puller for the Opera House for many years until it closed in the 1930s. His grandson, Charles Fields, said that it broke his grandfather’s heart when the stage that held so many great speakers and performers was converted into a boxing ring.

One of the fascinating things about the Opera House is that it still looks almost the same as when it closed. The theater seats are gone and there is a stairway added from below that opens onto the stage, but the rest is intact. Climbing the worn wooden stairs and seeing the ticket window, the balcony with its tiers of raised rows that once held theater seats, and the original stamped tin ceiling is a step back in time.

The wall of the dressing room beside the stage is adorned with names of performers, play titles, and show dates from 1900 through the late 1920s. The original windows were bricked over in 1952 when the Hunt’s Department Store renovated the building, but the windows are still preserved from the inside. As you stand in the darkened interior of the Opera House in 2008, it is easy to imagine the great plays and performances once held in this historic setting.