Final act?
Future of historic Tecumseh Opera House uncertain.
TECUMSEH — The Grand Old Dame of Tecumseh’s downtown is looking a bit seedy — and even a bit shaky.
The Opera House building, at 115 S Broadway, was built in 1905 and is showing its age. Glass is shattered, woodwork is rotting and bricks are falling away from the threestory building, which has been vacant for several years now. It was last home of SurfaceTek and probably is still owned by that company.
The Opera House opened on Sept. 22, 1905, to an estimated crowd of 5,000 who attended the production “Alabama.” The thirdfloor theater seated 700, and many plays, vaudeville acts and Chautauqua circuit performances were presented there.
The Chronicles of Oklahoma featured the Opera House in 2003, noting it was one of only a handful still in existence.
Offices and the telephone company were on the second floor, and the post office, a bookstore, and more offices occupied the ground floor. After talking pictures arrived, it became a community center, then The Marnie Hotel and the Central Hotel. In the 1960s, it was transformed into Stevenson’s Farm Supply. In the 1970s, it became the Five Star Milling Co.
In the early 2000s, the Tecumseh Industrial Authority (now called the Tecumseh Growth & Development Authority, or TGDA) purchased the building and subsequently leased it to Custom Soda Blasters (later SurfaceTek). The company later purchased the building and occupied it for several years before eventually moving out.
The owner of record is SurfaceTek Inc., with an Ogdensburg, New York, address. When you search for them online, you get Blast Boss Inc. in Richfield Springs, New York.
Little if any maintenance appears to have been done on the building in recent years.
In mid-2016, Dennis Dyer, who purchased a building next door, looked into purchasing the Opera House, with the goal of making it an event center, art gallery and coffee house. He inspected the building with an engineer up to the second floor and found 12 rooms “in pretty good shape.” He said the original tin is in the theater portion, which reportedly no longer has a floor.
But restoring it would take a great deal of money, and apparently Dyer’s dream was not to be.
So what does the future hold for the Opera House? The best outcome is that someone with a great deal of money could purchase and restore it, but that seems unlikely at this point. The other two options are much sadder — let it fall down, causing untold damage and injury, or have the city condemn it and have it torn down safely.
The only thing certain is that something should be done soon.
Trotter is editor of The Countywide & Sun in Tecumseh, a weekly newspaper she and her husband Wayne owned until selling it to an employee almost a year ago. She continues to work part-time.