On Dec 2, 2013, the Spearfish Area Historical Society
meeting was held at the Matthews Opera House.
Fifty-seven people came out on a night when the roads were icy and the
snow was flying. Tom Matthews shared his
personal history and his and the community efforts to renovate the Matthews
Opera House fifteen years ago. Paul
Higbee introduced a 10 minute video of the history of the Matthews Opera House;
the video was commissioned for the 2006 Matthews Opera House centennial
celebration and was also shown on SD Public TV. TIE Media Services produced the video with
Paul Higbee, Julia Monczunski and Ryan Phillips participating.
The Matthews Opera House was built and owned by Tom
Matthews' great-grandfather, Thomas N. Matthews, and owned by the family until
1946 when the building was sold to Mike Kelly.
Tom grew up in and around the building.
George Wagner was the caretaker when Tom was a young boy when the
building was no longer used for its original purpose as a theatrical
stage. Instead, it was used for various
extraneous activities such as roller skating by the light of a single 60 watt
bulbs dangling high up from the center dome, a dance studio, dance hall, gymnastics,
basketball court, and even a shooting gallery where the target was hung up on
stage. Tom remembered many fun and
rambunctious times in the Matthews.
A major part of Wyoming history was the Johnson County Cattle
War in April, 1892 between the homesteaders and open range ranchers. After the
war, ranchers were in need of someone to ship their cattle out and Thomas N.
Matthews provided that service with a team of cowboys. The profits allowed Thomas to expand his
business interests into Spearfish and Sundance from his main ranch in Gillette,
WY. The idea for a theater came from a
women's group where one of the women had seen the Crystal Theater in Gonzales,
TX, the town known for the first skirmish of the Mexican American War. The Matthews Opera House building is
frequently called the "Matthews Block" because the original adjacent
sandstone building was called "the block" and the name stuck when the
theater was built.
Thomas Matthews originally paid $50,000 to build the Opera
House which opened on Dec 3, 1906, with a political farce-comedy called
"The Lion and the Mouse". For
its first 10 years, many traveling repertory companies paid repeated visits to
packed houses of 300 people. By 1917,
"moving pictures" came in to the Opera House and live performances
became less frequent.
By the mid 1980’s it was determined
that serious restoration work would be needed to preserve and protect the Opera
House if it were to reach its centennial year. The Spearfish Downtown
Association took the first step and formed the non-profit Matthews Opera House
Society. The building was leased from owner Mike Kelly with a 95 year, rent
free agreement that the restoration would proceed on a timely basis. The first
restoration phase was completed by 1989. Work continued into the 90’s and was
completed by the end of 2006, the official centennial date of the opening of
the Matthews Opera House.
The renovation itself took a
tremendous effort by many, many volunteers.
Practically everything needed repair.
Tom Matthews and his wife, Theresa, had started a doll hospital in
Indianapolis when they lived there to attend college. The experience they gained in antique repair
came in to play in helping renovate the Opera House. The center dome was painted by Dick Dubois
and Theresa Matthews. All reliefs were
originally made of plaster of Paris and easily crumbled. The right side box was badly damaged and Tom
had the left box removed so that it could be carefully replicated to create a
new right box. Tom also found the
original color "red" in the wall just to the right of the metal
column on stage. The floor was sanded
and refinished with good results, but now the floor is so thin that it can
never be sanded again.
Today the Matthews Opera
House hosts live theater, staged musical productions and many local
events. Today's seating maximum is 270
compared to the original narrower seating to hold 300.
