Grand Opera House

wolfgirl500 on October 29, 2011 at 7:50 am

In his book “A Twentith Century History of Youngstown and Mahoning County, Ohio” at page 157, published in 1907. Thomas Sanderson clearly states that the Grand Opera House seated 1400 people, and since he was living at the time, and attended shows at the Grand Opera House, he was well aware of its seating capacity.

wolfgirl500 on October 29, 2011 at 6:27 am

Found a tinted postcard showing the theater and have added it to the photos section above.

Joe Vogel on October 29, 2011 at 12:05 am

Plympton Ross Berry was presumably the principal architect of the Grand Opera House, as well as its builder, but this is one of the theaters with which the Rochester, New York firm of Leon H. Lempert & Son was involved, as it was listed in the advertisements that firm placed in various publications of the late 19th and early 20th century.

I’ve been unable to discover when Lempert & Sons worked on the Youngstown project, or what the extent of it was, but I think it must have been alterations of some sort. The theater was built in 1872, and I’ve found no references indicating that Leon Lempert senior was active as an architect that early, and Lempert junior was born sometime around 1868.

In fact, in the early 1870s the elder Lempert was the scenic artist and stage designer at the opera house in Rochester, and for a while became its manager. In 1878, he was busy cajoling Rochester’s well-to-do to replace their aging theater with something more modern, according to an interview he gave to a Rochester newspaper that year. He expressed some very definite opinions about how he thought theaters should be designed.

When the city’s Lyceum Theatre was finally built in 1887, Lempert oversaw its decoration, and additionally designed 36 complete sets of scenery for use in the house.

It’s possible that Lempert senior did not become directly involved in archtiecture until Leon Lempert junior became a licensed architect, and the firm of Lempert & Son was formed, sometime in the late 1880s or early 1890s (if anybody can come up with the founding date of the firm, please let me know. There’s very little about the Lemperts on the Internet, despite the large number of theaters attributed to their firm.)

Plympton Ross Berry appears to have had no formal architectural training, but there are many sources indicating that he did design the buildings that his company erected. Dreck Spurlock Wilson’s book “African-American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945” attributes twenty major projects in Youngstown and New Castle to Berry, the Grand Opera House among them.

From the photo, it looks to me that the Opera House had a cast iron front. Cast iron facades in ornate styles were still very popular during the 1870s, and modules in various historic styles were available from catalogs published by their manufacturers. After being installed, they were usually painted, sometimes in rich polychrome schemes.

The Renaissance-Baroque facade of the Grand Opera House looks like it was painted white or ivory, with trim that might have been gold or black or some vivid color. I’d love to see a color picture of it, if one exists. Perhaps there is a tinted postcard of it somewhere.

wolfgirl500 on October 28, 2011 at 8:48 pm

I have posted an ad from the Sam Warner era of the Grand Opera House.

wolfgirl500 on October 28, 2011 at 7:25 pm

One in the same, but the most common name as shown in its ads was the Grand Opera House. From what I understand for its day, it was a fancy house. As to the date of its opening the 1872 is a matter of historic record via The Mahoning Valley Historical Society which has a large collection of material from this theater, and the P. Ross Berry who built the theater.

In his book “A Heritage To Share”, Howard Aley on page 95 gives this description based on Mahoning Valley Historical Society archives:

“The impressive structure had an iron front, 110 feet in length and was 78 feet in depth. The interior was 74 feet square with regular seating capacity of 1400, but on special occassions it held 2000. The thirty by fourty foot stage was served by two "commodious and neatly furnished dressing rooms.”

The ceiling was decorated with allegorical figures representing music, poetry, tragety, and painting, all artistically and tastefully done, and renewed from time to time to keep the attraction in excelent condition."

By the way a copy of the seating chart can be found in the picture section for this theater, so as you will see, the 900 seating capacity is not correct.