Sterling Opera House
215 N. 2nd Street,
Sterling,
CO
80751
215 N. 2nd Street,
Sterling,
CO
80751
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That sounds like a double to me!
I noticed that the 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists the 700 seat Sterling Theatre, managed by W. M. Noltie, while a 1911 edition of the Colorado Business Directory lists the Sterling Opera House managed by W. M. Noltie. The May 15, 1910 edition of The Nickelodeon has an item datelined Sterling saying “Wm. Noltie, proprietor of the opera house, has arranged to put on a nightly motion picture show and vaudeville performance.”
Both the Opera House and the Sterling Theatre are listed in the 1913-1914 American Motion Picture Directory, but I’m wondering if perhaps they were the same house, double listed? It wouldn’t be the only time AMPD had done that. Sterling was never a very big town, and the Directory lists two other movie theaters, the Electric and the Princess. Even though the population boomed from just over 3,000 in 1910 to almost 6,500 in 1920, Sterling supporting three theaters in that decade would have been a struggle, and four a miracle, especially if one of them had 700 seats.
The 1905 Cahn guide has a Sterling Opera House with a capacity of 425. This was almost certainly somewhere else, as the timeline and low capacity don’t match this structure.