The City Opera House on Front Street
Near Traverse City, Michigan
Half a block off the main drag stands a three-story brick and sandstone landmark that locals affectionately call the Grand Old Lady. This is the City Opera House, opened in eighteen ninety-one at the height of the lumber boom, when Traverse City had money and wanted to show it. Three local merchants, Charles Wilhelm, Anton Bartak, and Frank Vortruba, bought the site in eighteen ninety and hired an architect from Pontiac to design a building with shops below and a grand performance hall above.
The style is Richardsonian Romanesque, all heavy stone arches and rich brick, and it carries one small distinction that says a lot about its era. When it opened, it was the very first building in Traverse City wired for electric lights. For decades it hosted traveling vaudeville shows, lectures, and dances, then slid into disrepair as tastes changed.
A long community restoration brought it back, and today the Grand Old Lady still hosts concerts and events in one of the finest surviving Victorian opera houses in Michigan.
