- Location
- East side of Plaza Ferdinand
- Years
- 1883 - 1920
- Now
- Chase & Ralls, other offices
Pensacola lumber magnate Daniel F. Sullivan announced his plans for an opera house in 1882. H.R. Hensdale designed the structure, and A.V. Clubbs built it on the site of the old Santa Rosa Hotel, opposite Plaza Ferdinand, for $50,000. The Pensacola Opera House opened on January 4, 1883 with a production of The Merry War.
For more than three decades, the Opera House entertained the booming port city with operas, plays, vaudeville and minstrel shows, silent films, and speakers such as Booker T. Washington in 1900. As Jim Crow laws hardened the racial lines in Pensacola, a 1905 renovation separated white and Black entrances and added a third section for “ladies of the evening.”
The building was damaged by two hurricanes in 1916. When Sarah Bernhardt made a stop there in January 1917 on her final American tour, “a piece of scenery came loose and toppled over on her head.” Another hurricane later that year dashed any hopes of repairing the damage. The final remnants were demolished in 1920, but bricks and ironwork were recycled in the construction of the Saenger Theatre.
