Chautauqua Auditorium

About this property

The Chautauqua Auditorium is a wooden building constructed for the first season of the Colorado Chautauqua in 1898, and through the years has been a venue for many lectures, musical performances, and motion pictures both primitive and modern. Located at the Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder, Colorado, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. It then stood "almost as it was built and as it was dedicated on July 4, 1898." On May 12, 1898, construction of the Chautauqua Auditorium commenced; it was completed in time for the opening of the first Texas-Colorado Chautauqua season on July 4, 1898. The wooden building had dirt floors, covered with sawdust, and simple pine benches. The center section of the dirt and sawdust floor was replaced with a concrete floor in 1918, and at the same time some of the original pine benches were replaced with opera chairs. In the 1970s, about the time the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, it was in a dilapidated condition. A combination of two factors—the NRHP designation and the decision of the Colorado Music Festival to call the Chautauqua Auditorium its home—provided the impetus for a general renovation of the structure. Broken seats were replaced, the roof was repaired, and loose boards were reattached or replaced. The overall design of the building, however, remained unchanged. The acoustics of this wooden building remain as they have been. As of 2024, it is still possible to see daylight through the cracks in the walls of the Auditorium. However, it is no longer possible to see the Moon and stars through cracks in the roof. Henry Watterson of Kentucky spoke on opening day, July 4, 1898. William Jennings Bryan first appeared at the Auditorium on July 12, 1899. He would return, with evangelist Samuel Porter Jones, for Jones/Bryan Day in 1905. Republican and Democratic orators were invited to give campaign speeches for their respective presidential candidates, William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, in 1900. Jonathan P. Dolliver spoke on August 20, 1900 and Champ Clark the following week. Senators Robert M. La Follette and Benjamin Tillman appeared in 1907. The famed evangelist Billy Sunday spoke to large crowds at the Auditorium in 1909, 1924, 1925, and 1931. The Kansas City Orchestra gave a number of evening concerts in the first year, 1898. Louis Richar's Band, from Chicago, played a number of concerts each year from 1903 to 1906. John Philip Sousa and his band appeared in the fall of 1904, after the Chautauqua season was over for that year. The 1910 program featured "costumed recitals from grand opera" presented by the Chicago Operatic Company on July 4.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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