The Show Goes On

- At 140 years old, downtown Adrian's ‘public hall' is the oldest continually operating theater in Michigan.

By Arlene Bachanov

Daily Telegram Special Writer

On Nov. 25, 1863, an agreement was made between one P.J. Spaulding and prominent Adrian resident Charles M. Croswell that Spaulding would sell Croswell some property on Maumee Street in Adrian so that a public hall could be built there. The transaction was made for the grand sum of $375 “of the stock of said Hall.”

Virtually nothing else is known today about the construction and very early history of what was first called the Adrian Union Hall, then by various names including Croswell's Opera House and, finally, as simply the Croswell Opera House.

Among the events shrouded in mystery is when the hall was actually completed and opened to the public. What is known is that newspaper items in 1865 referred to the slate roof being completed, and that Croswell took out a $10,000 mortgage to finish the building on Jan. 1, 1866.

Because the building was obviously almost done by that date, the Croswell Opera House today puts its founding at “circa 1866” and, this year, celebrates its 140th birthday.

By being in business continually, albeit with different uses, for 140 years, the Croswell stands as the oldest continually operating theater in Michigan and, as nearly as can be ascertained by its staff, might be the third- or fourth-oldest continually operating theater in the country.

What information does exist about the Croswell's beginnings, along with the much-better-documented rest of its rich history, has been painstakingly gathered from historical records, theater memorabilia and many other sources by Joan Woodward, the theater's historian. Woodward and a handful of other people connected with the Croswell, among them long-time performers Judy Vanzo and Milt Shoch, began the task of archiving the building's history in 1994.

Today, the archives are a treasure trove of information about the Croswell's nearly a century and a half in business, with the theater's very beginnings providing the biggest hole in the story.

The fact that no record seems to exist of the Adrian Union Hall's opening, whenever exactly it took place - and that no photos have ever been found of the building's early years at all - is mystifying to Robert Soller, the Croswell's longtime (now retired) artistic director.

“This would've been huge in 1866 for a little tiny town,” he said. “Especially since the Civil War was over, the city hadn't been overrun by the South or anything like that to disrupt things, and we know of course that photography was already in existence because the war was so well documented. It's amazing no one seems to have taken a picture when this place opened.”

It's all the more interesting given Charles Croswell's stature in the community, which ought to have made any business venture of his big news. By 1866, he had already served as deputy county clerk, register of deeds, city attorney, mayor and state senator - the position he held at the time he and some Adrian businessmen decided to build the Union Hall - along with helping found the Republican Party. Not long after this point, in the 1870s, he was twice elected Michigan's governor.

At any rate, by 1867 the building was most definitely in business. The first record of a show there dates to July of that year, when Lloyd's Minstrels and Brass Band performed. The run didn't end well, though, as Lloyd made off with the box office receipts, leaving his troupe unpaid. The company had to hold a benefit performance just to be able to go on to a different city.

In those early years, the hall was used for a wide variety of events, most of which may make the term “opera house” seem a bit overblown. But there was a reason for the fancy name. Actors were looked down on as being reprobates, and “theater” had the resulting negative connotation. Calling the building an “opera house” gave it a better reputation.

For its first half-century, helped by its location on the railroad that put it a day out of both Detroit and Chicago and therefore a perfect stopping point for shows, the Croswell was host to many traveling theatrical productions. The first evidence of such dates to not long after Lloyd and his minstrels made their ill-fated appearance. “Our American Cousin,” the play which Abraham Lincoln was attending in Washington when he was assassinated in 1865, made a stop in Adrian in 1867 with the same company as had been onstage that infamous night at Ford's Theater.

Another, albeit indirect, tie to Lincoln came when Edwin Booth, brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and one of the greatest actors of his time, played two different shows there in the 1870s. Booth wasn't the only noted performer who came to the Croswell stage either; the famous actress Maude Adams played the title role in “Peter Pan” there in 1913. In another vein, John Philip Sousa and his band played the Croswell three different times.

The building was also used extensively as a lecture hall, with noted speakers including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Henry Ward Beecher and Frederick Douglass presenting talks.

Some of the many other events held there are in evidence today on the wall of the Croswell's Heritage Room. There's a playbill from the 1906 production of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” a show that played the Croswell no fewer than 50 times over the years. Another bill touts the appearance of the “Berger Family Elite Concert Company” in 1879.

Still another, from 1877, declares for the “Grand Operetta, The Coronation of the Rose” that “Twenty-Five Young Ladies will personate the different Flowers, Sunshine, Spray, Rainbow, and the Goddess Night, and Fifty Children as Heather Bells, Dew Drops, Zephyrs and Night Fairies, all under the direction of Mrs. Cornelia Baldwin.”

Bringing melodramas and other touring productions to the theater was no small undertaking. Everything to put on the show - costumes, props, scenery - had to be offloaded from the train, hauled to the theater, unpacked, set up, used for the show, packed up again and hauled out - with the productions often only staged for one night or a few at most.

Sometimes, too, these productions were huge affairs; as just one example, in 1913 the show “The Pink Lady” arrived - for one performance - with nearly 100 cast members and equipment including scenery and props for a complete banquet scene.

“I have no idea how they did it,” Soller laughed.

The building was also used for any number of community events, from benefits to political meetings to church fairs to commencement ceremonies.

One use of the Croswell had nothing to do with any of those things. When the famous fairgrounds grandstand collapse occurred in 1879, the theater was pressed into service as a hospital for almost three weeks.

It was a suitable space for that use because in those days the seats - straight-backed wooden chairs - were not fixed to the floor and the floor itself was flat, not "raked," or pitched, as it is today. Being able to move the chairs out of the way and have a flat floor meant the hall could be cleared for any number of purposes, including dancing, roller-skating and even a poultry show.

Many renovations took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including not only much-improved seating but enlargements to the stage (which, in fact, made it for a time the largest in Michigan outside of Detroit and able to accommodate all the biggest productions) and orchestra pit; putting the raked floor in; and of course the installation of electric lighting.

As movies became more popular and staged productions became less so, the Croswell's main purpose changed. In 1921, the building became a movie theater, with a number of renovations taking place to accommodate the new use.

Originally, the entrance was set back from the street, down an open-air gravel path, but in the remodeling the walkway was covered over and a tiled floor installed. The original horseshoe balcony was removed in favor of one that runs straight across the auditorium. Chambers - still visible today on either side of the stage - were put in to hold the pipes for the organ that was used to accompany those silent-movie-era films.

Upgrades, redecorations and some other work aside, the interior as it looks today dates to that 1921 renovation. People who have seen some of the highly ornate movie houses of that time, like Detroit's Fox Theater, may find the relative plainness of the Croswell surprising. But it's important, Soller said, to remember that the building itself was designed for very utilitarian, meeting-hall-style purposes and wasn't suited to being redecorated with the elaborate treatments given to the movie theaters actually built in the 1920s and 1930s.

“The Croswell was built like a barn,” he said. “It's a big square box.”

The Croswell's incarnation as a movie house lasted almost 50 years, until 1967 when the Butterfield Theatre Chain, to which it was leased, decided to close it down. The building was facing demolition, but Adrian's Catherine Smith and a group of other civic-minded community residents banded together and approached the Adrian Foundation's Charles Hickman for financial help to purchase the theater.

The foundation bought the building and deeded it to the newly formed Croswell Opera House and Fine Arts Association. From that point on, the Croswell became a home once again for live theater - this time produced in-house - and other community functions. One hundred years after Charles Croswell and his associates purchased property for a “Public Hall” in Adrian, the building had returned to its original purpose.

“It was back doing what Governor Croswell and his backers first envisioned,” Soller said, “bringing performing arts and community activities, for the benefit of the total community.”

The show goes on