The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1885–2026
Tested negative on this ground, by name. The test was run in Chapman (1880) and Howard (1907) and in the Polk directory record as reached, for any hall in Clay or Harris township answering to opera house, academy of music, or theatre: no opera house, and no building raised as a public hall of any kind, is named for either township in any source reached. The halls this ground actually had are the ones Arts's synthesis already names — the district schoolhouse, the farm township's only public room, with the churches beside it — borrowed rooms, never built ones. The county's opera house stands in South Bend and is boundary-told in one line: the Oliver Opera House, opened 1885 on Main Street by the Oliver plow family, James and J. D. Oliver, at a cost of $200,000 and reputed among the finest opera houses in the United States, its scenery painted by the Chicago Opera House's own scenic artists; converted to a movie house in 1931 when the road shows passed, closed in 1953, its auditorium demolished in 1955 and the rest in 1978. A Granger farmer who saw a touring opera or a legitimate play in the opera-house era saw it there, under the Olivers' roof, or did not see one. The settler for the township negative, if any hall record survives to contradict it, is the township trustees' minute books behind Howard's township chapters.
From Building South Bend (University of Notre Dame), the Oliver Opera House record (1885–1978); Chapman (1880) and Howard (1907) for the township test; Arts's synthesis for the schoolhouse and churches.