Fulton Opera House

About this property

The Fulton Opera House, also known as the Fulton Theatre or simply The Fulton, is a League of Regional Theatres class B regional theater located in historic downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It is reportedly the oldest working theatre in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. The current structure was built in 1852 on the foundation of Lancaster's former jail, which dated to 1739. In 1763, the twenty surviving members of the Conestoga were placed in protective custody at the jail after fourteen Conestoga were murdered by a settler mob known as the Paxton Boys. On December 27, 1763, thirteen days after the first massacre, the Paxton Boys broke past the sheriff and others defending the jail and murdered all of the remaining Conestoga. None of the attackers were arrested. This became the subject matter for the first plays ever written on American soil: A Dialogue Between Andrew Trueman and Thomas Zealot About the Killing the Indians at Cannestogoe and Lancaster and The Paxton Boys, a Farce. The building was designated as a site of significance to the Underground Railroad by the National Park Service in 2008. This connection stemmed from an event in 1835 where two fugitive slave women were clandestinely freed from the jail by the sheriff in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing them to escape to Philadelphia where they were later captured. The building was originally called Fulton Hall, named after Lancaster native Robert Fulton. Fulton Hall operated as a town hall and stage for traveling theatrical groups, hosting noted orators including William Jennings Bryan and Lancaster abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens along with famed actors including Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth. During the American Civil War, Fulton Hall served as an armory and hospital. In 1856, Fulton Hall was sold to hotelkeeper Hilaire Zaepfel and showman Blasius Yecker. Zaepfel sold his share of the hall to Yecker in 1869, and Yecker commissioned theatre architect Edwin Forrest Durang to renovate it into a Victorian opera house. Its grand opening took place on October 2, 1873 with a performance of Othello benefitting Civil War widows and orphans. A projection booth was installed in 1930, allowing the theatre to screen movies. Over time, stage productions ceased entirely, and the theatre languished, primarily screening second- and third-run films. Facing demolition, a campaign was launched in the 1950s to restore the theatre. A grand reopening ceremony occurred in 1952, on the 100th anniversary of the theatre's creation, but business remained weak. The 1959 production of Our Town, starring Jeanne Clemson, marked the first time that a live theater production had been performed at the Fulton Opera House in thirty years. In 1962, the Fulton Opera House Foundation was formed, and funds were raised to purchase the building as a nonprofit in the hopes of raising money so that it could be restored. In 1995, the renovation of the theatre was completed; the Fulton would reopen that October with a staging of Steven Sondheim's Company.

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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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