Opera House

Joe Vogel on August 11, 2023 at 6:45 pm

This house might have been called the Idle Hour Theatre. An interesting item appeared in the August 9, 1913 issue of Motography, which said that W. A. Matlack, operator of the Idle Hour Theatre at New Hampton, had leased the Opera House and would present a season of plays, while continuing to show movies at the Idle Hour.

The only theater listed at New Hampton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was the Idle Hour, and it was listed as being on Main Street. The December 2, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World said that “[t]he Idle Hour theater has been remodeled and the interior redecorated.” The house was still in operation in 1918, when the May 4 MPW said it had been taken over by a new owner. That’s the latest mention of the Idle Hour I’ve been able to find. In 1917 the new Fireman’s Theatre opened and began showing movies in November, and it seems unlikely that any competitors would have lasted long.

As for the Opera House, it had 400 seats according to a 1908 Iowa business directory, which listed it as one of two theaters in New Hampton, the other being the 3,000-seat Fireman’s Auditorium. The Fireman’s Theatre opened in 1917 was the second big theater built by the New Hampton Fire Department. The first opened in 1898, as part of the department’s new headquarters. It doesn’t seem to have harmed business at the Opera House, though, as that venue continued to be mentioned in The Billboard and The New York Clipper into the 1910s. The Opera House must have had a flat floor , though, as the local high school’s basketball games were held there for many years.