Try: History and description of Piper's Opera House, Virginia City, Nevada
/ by Robert A. Crawford.  It's a (possibly unpublished) M.S. thesis from
UCLA, dated 1950.  Crawford was a theater major.
 
Synopsis of his material on recycling is:  Piper's Opera House (read
theater" in the modern sense) was totally destroyed by fire in 1883.  The
town took up a subscription to help the owner - John Piper - to rebuild.
To conserve money, he contracted to remove some unused mine buildings in
the area (Virginia City = Comstock Lode...), which may have dated to the
late 50's or early 60's.  Since the lumber was rough-sawn, and some of it
was scorched from a prior fire in 1875, he lined the inside walls with
fabric (we'd call it canvas now, I believe it was "muslin" then) and
applied wall-paper over that.
 
Consider what the (non-documentary) record would show - The building was
built gradually over a period of perhaps 25 years from a variety of
materials not normally used for such a structure (perhaps indicating
construction by a low bidder?).  Sometime after its construction it was
involved in a fire that, while causing damage (in a MOST unusual pattern)
to parts of the structure, did not prevent its reuse after some repairs.
 
I've been in a saloon area under the auditorium.  The main beams are HUGE -
single pieces of wood - not laminates - perhaps 12 by 18 or 20 inches and
75 - 100 feet long (They don't grow 'em that big nowadays!!!) and well
charred on all four sides.  Where one has been cut for a modern (1970's)
stabilization project, it appears solid on the inside - the charring being
just on the surface half inch or so.  The Opera House is undergoing
restoration now.  The plans actually call for relining the auditorium with
fabric!  Of course the elevator they have to add is hardly of the period...
 
On bottle recycling see "Second Time Around: A Look at Bottle Reuse", Jane
Busch in Historical Archaeology, 21(1), 1987, although she doesn't
particularly discuss the western recycling before about 1890.   Bottle
recycling, at least in the west of the earlier 19th century, was far from
"just liquor bottles" or "just in economically depressed areas".
 
Also, Bottles on the Western Frontier, Wilson, Rex L., 1981.  Wilson states
catagorically that "Because bottles were often reused in the nineteenth
century, their presence as an exclusive means of dating sites is risky at
best."