The Metropolitan Opera House...1899...Opening Night:

The Metropolitan Opera House opened its doors in 1899, two days after Christmas. It was the grandest structure built for miles. The ladies dressed in gowns made especially for the occasion. Their escorts had paid $2.50 for the tickets. The famous comedian, Tim Murphy, was the star. The play for opening night was “The Carpetbaggers.” The theatre opening was the biggest social event in the history of Iowa Falls. In his private box on the right side of the stage sat Eugene Ellsworth, millionaire philanthropist, who built the ornate structure. Ellsworth, who had parlayed his father's livery stable and an 1868 venture selling prairie chickens to eastern gourmets into a vast fortune in real estate, is Iowa Falls' most prominent and one of the best-liked residents. A man who has led an unusual life—going off to the Civil War with his father as a teenage drummer boy. Ellsworth delighted in the new and unusual. He had constructed the first “golf house” and golf course at Iowa Falls, which is open to the public. He established a “zoological park” stocked with deer, elk and buffalo. In 1882, he built and then sailed the first steamboat ever seen on Spirit Lake. It was named Alpha. Ellsworth's newest project-The Opera House-was as modern as the steamship was in 1882. The keystone of the arch over the entrance sported a carved bust of Shakespeare, and on either side were carved musical emblems and the masques of comedy and tragedy. On the right side of the stage was the Ellsworth box, and on the left another box for visiting dignitaries. Both were furnished with plush drapes and tapestry upholstered chairs, and the lobby,  decorated in Pompeiin red with ivory trim on the tapestried walls. Alpha Swartz, was a retired pharmacist, and one of the youthful ushers hired for opening night. Swartz stayed on as an usher for three years. “The most memorable performance in the opera house was Dustin Farnum” he recalled. He played in “The Virginian'. Swartz said the plays would tour from Chicago to Dubuque and then to Iowa Falls. “The Opera House was a better one than they had in Des Moines,” he says. The first movie to play the Opera House was “The Birth of a Nation,” and an orchestra was hired to play during the showing. The orchestra pit is covered now, but Tommy Tompkins, a previous manager of the theatre, showed the original intercom system-speaking tubes into which one whistled to attract attention at the other end. “I'd like to see some group take this over and remodel it,” Tompkins says.    (From an article by state editor, Dave Brown, in the Waterloo Courier, December 17, 1972.)