WASHINGTON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
St. George Social Hall & Opera House

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From 1875 until the 1930s, this building was the cultural center of the community. The slope of the floor was mechanically adjustable to afford an excellent view of the stage. Local dramatic clubs and outside players presented refined productions with elaborate scenery. The building was used for many years by the U&I Sugar Company for offices and beet seed storage. Recently it has been restored and has once again become the heart of the downtown historic district.

LOCATION

212 N. Main Street
(Main at Diagonal Street and 200 North)
St. George, UT 84770

Northeast corner of Main Street and 200 North

37°6'43"N 113°34'56"W

HISTORY

The St. George Opera House was completed in 1880.

Theatrical productions and an occasional musical were performed there. Among these were:
H.M.S. Pinafore (1886,1889)
Rob Roy McGregor (1891)
Under the Palms (1891)
Queen Esther (1891)
Children of Israel Wandering About in Egypt (1891)

Woodward School musicals such as "The Merry Milkmaids", "Priscilla", and "Olivette" were performed there between 1906 and 1908.

The new Dixie Stake Academy (later Dixie College) staged performances in the Opera House from 1911 to about 1927.

In 1930, the Opera House was sold to the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company for use as a sugar beet seed factory.

The St. George Social Hall was put on the National Register of Historic Places (#1991000360) on April 3, 1991.

The St. George Social Hall & Opera House was restored and became part of the Pioneer Center for the Arts, completed in 1996.

Commentary by Mary Phoenix:
The St. George Social Hall or Opera House was constructed in 1875, not quite fourteeen years after the pioneers first entered the St. George valley.
Joseph Smith taught that "man is that he might have joy", and Smith's followers interpreted this "joy" to be participation in and enjoyment of the cultural arts, and this they did assiduously. The first drama was presented locally in a bowery made of tumble weeds just nine months after the city's birth.
On the northeast corner of Main street where it bisects Diagonal, there was a wine celler used to store Dixie wine which was turned in as tithing. The Builders' Union constructed a theater over the wine cellar, using it as a stage. The completed building, which seated four hundred people, had a large stage, commodious dressing rooms, excellent acoustics, an orchestra pit, and real scenery bought from a bankrupt New York opera company.
The crowning glory of the building was its mechanized floor which could be raised to a sloping position so that the occupants of every seat could have an unobstructed view of the stage, or the floor could be lowered for dances.
For fifty years it was the center of social and cultural life in the Cotton Mission. At the present time, the City of St, George is renovating and restoring the building.
Local people like to remember the night the theater had a production of what must have been a homemade version of East Lynne. In the final scene, the poor sick wife crept to the doorstep begging her adamant husband to let her see her children "ere I die".
Emotions in the audience were running high and sobbing was audible, but it was a miner from Silver Reef who took matters into his own hands. Rumor has it that he had stopped in Leeds to partake liberally of sacramental wine, but he could stand no more so he arose, took out his trusty six-shooter and bawled out, "You let her see them kids or I'll blow your 'blankety-blank' head off!"
His friends were not quick enough to stop the shot, but they diverted his aim. The bullet hole remains in the ceiling until this day, a testimony to how seriously pioneer Dixie took its drama.

PHOTOS

WCHS photos:
WCHS-00568     Jon Bowcutt sketch of the St. George Social Hall or Opera House

Other photos on the web:
St. George Opera House

REFERENCES

St. George Opera House

Historical Buildings of Washington County (Volume 2), pp. 28-29.

Landmark and Historic Sites: City of St. George, pp. 23-1 through 23-7.