67. Upham’s Opera House

Location: Approximately at 422 Hoffman Street, between Grand and St. Joseph Streets, Saugatuck
Date: 1870-1900s

Upham Opera House, highlighted

In 1887 or 1888, a saloon keeper named Charles Miller bought a building that had been part of the H.D. Moore lumbering operation in Mooreville and moved it up the hill to lot 117, across Hoffman Street from the present All Saints Church. The 2.5-story structure, with the addition of stage, scenery and kerosene floodlights, was known as Miller’s Hall until he sold the operation to his son-in-law Captain Sherman Upham.

Upham’s Opera House, in the days before television or even radio, hosted any sort of entertainment that would sell tickets. In 1900, it offered a lecture on monastic life, a St. Patrick’s Ball in March, the Old Maids of America meeting in July, and a colored minstrel in August. It operated helter-skelter as a public auditorium until about 1920.