Davis Opera House-Davis Hall

This video is part of the Genesee Country Village & Museum audio tour series. Click through all the videos in the playlist to learn about life in New York during the 19th century.
Transcript:
Between the 1860’s and World War I, performance halls, known as opera houses, opened up in small towns all across the region. For example, the Davis Hall here at the museum, Frank Davis Proprietor, was built in 1884 in the town of South Butler in Wayne County. To tell the truth, the name “opera house” could sometimes be a bit misleading. To be sure, many of the entertainments featured in these halls lived up to the image of gentility and refinement you might have expected. But some other activities and performances were decidedly on the low brow side. And because it was often difficult to attract entertainers, many opera houses doubled as stores or other mercantile enterprises. If you go upstairs in the Davis building you can see how Frank Davis' performance hall might have appeared around 1910.