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(Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
This two-story opera house with commercial storefronts sits directly across Main Street from the 1880 Imperial Hotel. The building, of brick detailed in lighter-colored stone trim, retains its original corner entrance beneath a smaller pediment in a secondary cornice. The narrow Main Street facade has three bays crowned by a central pediment and a bracketed cornice. Inside, the porcelain tile floor, marble staircase with ornamental iron baluster, and wood-work have been restored. A splendid, hand-carved Honduran mahogany bar has been added.
William Henry Dickens brought respectability to town when his opera house opened on February 2, 1882, with Will Holland's The Greek Twins. Dickens's house (1904), 303 Coffman Street, one block west of Main, was the scene of his murder in 1915 and subsequently became a hospital and, more recently, a boarding house.