Digital Bob Archive

The Juneau Opera House, which stood on the corner of Second and Seward Streets - the National Bank of Alaska corner - would be 100 years old this year if it had remained standing. As it was, it stood for 72 years and during a considerable number of those years it was the entertainment and social center of the town. Probably no opera was ever performed there, but Opera House was a common name, at least in the North, for a combination theater-saloon. Douglas had an Opera House and so in time did Forty Mile, Circle City and Dawson.

But if there was no opera, there were stage plays and vaudeville at the Juneau Opera House, and in time it became Juneau's first regular movie house. There were also prize fights, church services and church socials, Christmas entertainments, political conventions, meetings of the Juneau Fire Association, the Elks Lodge and the Grand Army of the Republic; at least one term of the U.S.
District Court, school plays and programs, masquerade balls and other dances, and it was mentioned in 1913 as a candidate for becoming Alaska's first Capitol. And although Juneau newspapers, over the years, frequently mentioned the Opera House in their columns, none of them got specific about any entertainment that may have gone on in the private boxes or the rooms upstairs.

The first issue of Juneau's first newspaper, The Alaska Free Press, on January 19, 1887, reported that Herman Hart and William McPhee had purchased the corner lot at Second and Seward for $1,000 cash and would put up a two-story business building measuring 45 by 80 feet. It was one of the choice locations in the downtown area, but the original announcement did not state what the building would be used for.

Hart was operating the Palace Theater, which had a saloon in connection, at the northwest corner of Second and Franklin, and brought troupes of actors or vaudeville performers to Juneau several times a year. In April, 1887, he brought in a minstrel troupe described as \"old and experienced hands in the business.\" McPhee was a big Nova Scotian who had worked for John Treadwell on Douglas Island. Before they began construction the two men took in another partner, James \"Slim Jim\" Winn, a Cornishman who had first come north to the Cassiar in 1874. They let the construction contract to Charles W. Young, the man who founded what is now Ace Hardware in downtown Juneau.

Construction began in May and early in June it was announced that \"Hart's Opera House is going up wih a rush and will be ready for the Fourth of July.\" It wasn't exactly ready but it was far enough along that they could hold a gala dance and, most importantly, the bar was operating. There had been no need to wait for a license; sale of liquor was prohibited but more than a dozen saloons operated in Juneau.

To be in readiness for opening the theater, Hart had sent to Victoria for theater man George T. Snow and his family.