Tom Connor wrote:

>During this discussion it seems to me there was a story in the Boston Globe
>(I think) of a Boston Opera House that was a notable building, but at the
>turn of the century was torn down.  This is all very vague, but I'm trying
>to say I think there is some history to an Opera House in Boston, but I'm
>clearly not an historian.

Nor am I, but Walter Muir Whitehead was, and he briefly described the
Boston Opera House & other auditoriums in his book *Boston: a Topographical
History*. The Opera House was built in 1909 on a site not far from Symphony
Hall, and demolished in 1958. Maybe some of the old-timers among us
remember the place.

The building TC refers to was probably the Music Hall, on Winter St. near
the Common, which was built in 1852 and where the BSO played until Symphony
Hall opened in 1900. I don't think any trace of the Music Hall remains
today, and it may indeed have been pulled down about a century ago.

Whitehead had a few mordant things to say about the skinflint Yankees who
dominated the cultural life of Boston in those days, who were willing to
pay for excellent buildings but not for good land to put them on. On the
Opera House: "... a preposterous piece of New England parsimoniousness to
have placed such a building where one was forced to enter ... by crawling
in obliquely from the grimy sidewalk of a crowded street. ... a stingy
and tasteless absurdity to jam a sizable Opera House between a storage
warehouse and blocks of undistinguished apartments."  On Symphony Hall:
"... it is unfortunate that it should have been plumped down upon a totally
undistinguished site without an inch of ground around it."

Larry Blaine