The Crump Theatre
Indiana
The Crump Theatre in Columbus, Indiana, opened in eighteen eighty-nine and is one of the oldest surviving opera houses in the state. Columbus is famous today as an unlikely architectural capital, home to buildings by Eero Saarinen, I. M.
Pei, and Richard Meier. But the Crump predates all of them. Built by local businessman John Smith Crump, it hosted traveling performers, political rallies, and community events through the late Victorian era.
The building later served as a movie house for decades, and a preservation effort in the nineteen nineties helped save it. It stands in the downtown historic district as a reminder that Columbus's civic ambition was not invented by modernism in the nineteen fifties. The town has always expected quality from its public spaces.
