Liberty Hall Theatre

There is a Bowersock Opera House in Lawrence listed in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. There are no street addresses in this Guide. So I don’t know how it fits in with this theatre, the Liberty Hall/Bowersock/Jayhawker. The Mgr was J.D. Bowersock, and it had 1,000 seats and was located upstairs on the second floor. It had both gas and electric illumination; the proscenium opening was 30 feet square,and the stage was 30 feet deep. There were 2 daily newspapers in Lawrence, plus 3 weeklies; and 2 hotels for show folk, the Eldridge and the Lawrence. The 1897 population of Lawrence was 12,000.

Liberty Hall was known as the Jayhawker for quite a while. My father worked for the company that owned a chain of theaters in the Midwest, the Jayhawker and Varsity among them, and my first job was as a cashier at the Jayhawker in 1958. The Liberty Hall restrooms are still the same…a real vintage experience.
Susan (Whitley) Peters