Even in its infancy in the late 1800s, Brookings citizens found time to enjoy and participate in the performing and entertaining arts.
Probably more than in other growing communities in Dakota Territory, Brookings residents managed to balance the hardships of frontier life and bring to the community a plethora of social, political, religious, cultural and educational activities.
In those difficult pioneering days of smoothing out rough edges and squaring up jagged corners, they still had time for a slice of civilization in their prairie home.
The list of activities enjoyed in Brookings from 1879 to the end of that century is surprising. There were plays, dramas, operettas, concerts, parties, lectures, dances, and dozens of other events and staged shows, even roller skating and a jackrabbit race.
Credit for this early renaissance goes to two businessmen, Bert Olds and his nephew, Horace Fishback. Their story is in an excellently researched 1962 thesis by Theodore R. Switzer as partial fulfillment for his masters degree in speech at what was then South Dakota State College.
Switzer limited his research on theater and theatrical activity to the first 20 years of Brookings early years. Information that follows is a result of Switzers work.
In early 1880, Olds and Fishback had constructed a two-story general merchandise store near the southwest corner of Fourth and Main. A small area in the 25-foot by 80-foot building was a check cashing area the first step in the establishment of the First National Bank in 1883. It became todays First Bank and Trust, which remains a part of the legacy for Horace Fishback, Sr.
That 1880 building was then the largest structure in town. Its second floor was designated by Olds and Fishback as the community hall. It became the first theater in Brookings.
The first amateur theater production was staged there in the spring of 1880, nearly a decade before South Dakota statehood. Many other amateur and professional plays, including The Mikado, Uncle Toms Cabin, Ten Nights in a Bar Room, Snow White, and many others would follow. Intermingled were dozens of dances, lectures and other social and cultural events.
Also emerging from those early successful cultural presentations at the Olds and Fishback Hall were discussions of a Brookings opera house. In late November 1883, a stock company was formed to work toward such a building with a dual purpose: an opera house and a roller skating rink. It opened in summer 1884.
To accommodate the skating part of the 100-foot by 40-foot building, the floor was of maple.
Its stage was 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep. Early reports were that two stoves, large, round and of sheet iron, would heat the building. The first year, it was used exclusively for roller skating, but through the next 20 years it was a mecca for a host of cultural presentations, joining with the Olds and Fishback Hall for various events. The Opera House was located across the street east of what is today the old Swanee Hotel at 3rd Avenue and 4th Street.
Because the Olds/Fishback Hall was on the second floor of the first-level store, many of the events could not be physically held in the hall, where access for large scenery and other sets was difficult.
The citys first-ever amateur play was presented in the Olds/Fishback Hall in the fall of 1880. Over the years, a dozen other amateur productions were held there, and 85 similar plays were put on at the Opera House. During those years, both the local high school and State College groups also made use of the hall and the opera house for stage events.
A professional acting troupe, the first to appear in Brookings presented the musical comedy Girofle Girofla.in June 1884.
Uncle Toms Cabin was first presented in Brookings by a professional company in 1884. Other traveling troupes staging that play would return to Brookings six more times over the years.
One of the later Uncle Tom shows playing at the Opera House advertised that it had 25 performers, 18 plantation singers, six monster bloodhounds and 2 Irish trick donkeys.
From time to time during those years, Brookings citizens who where accomplished actors joined the professional troupes playing in town. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. George Diggle, who joined the tour of the Andrews Opera Company in 1887. In 1895, Local resident Mat Wimsey performed with the variety company, Alhambra Vaudevilles.
There were professional actors who did just the opposite. J. H. Hale, the advance man for the popular Swiss Bell Ringers Variety Company, grew tired of his traveling life and decided to settle in Brookings.
He was soon hired by State College, not to help students in acting, but to train and condition men of the college who went on to win first place in an intercollegiate athletic contest in May 1899 at Mitchell.
Theater managers here tried to make audiences as physically and mentally comfortable during plays as possible. But sometimes their efforts were in vain. A professional actor in a comedy in Brookings in 1895 cooled his posterior in a pail of water, which apparently was distasteful to one lady in the Opera House audience.
She arose from her chair, uttered some unintelligible remarks and stomped out in disgust.
Some of the events at the hall or the Opera House related to agriculture. The first farm-related event was at the Olds/Fishback Hall on June 12, 1880, to discuss forming an area Agricultural Society, which was accomplished.
The many Norwegians in Brookings observed Norway Independence Day on May 17, 1882, at Olds/Fishback Hall. The Brookings Sentinel stated the hall was overflowing.
Another use of both the hall and the Opera House was dancing. In the 20 years of the study, there were 42 dances at the hall and 67 at the Opera House. Reporting on the first dance at the hall in April of 1880, the Brookings Press said the hall was an excellent place for dancing.
Most political meetings took place in the hall. Judge W. W. Brookings, spoke there in the fall of 1882. His subject was to be agriculture, but his remarks were judged by the local press as political, and Brookings namesake was harshly criticized editorially.
Manufacturers often used the hall and Opera House to promote and sell their products. Representatives of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Herb Company presented daily programs for a full week in Brookings, extolling their patented Native American medicines. A company selling washing machines once rented the hall to show off its new machine.
Switzers thesis reported on a wide variety of cultural and educational events in Brookings. Many were plays by both local talent and professional troupes, but there were also recitals, variety shows, pantomimes, suppers, reunions, speech and debate contests, boxing matches, fencing, minstrels, magic shows, jig and clog dances, readings, cycling, impersonations, horse and pony shows, tumblers, contortionists, tightrope walking, ventriloquists and hypnotists.
There was even a jackrabbit race in the Opera House on Feb. 7, 1885, but the show ended abruptly when one of the two racing rabbits escaped its cage through a small hole on the stage.
One of the most successful events at the Opera House was the Brookings Merchants Trade Carnival on March 21, 1890. It was staged by the women of the local Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches.
Church women wore costumes that had distinct features of each business or industry. The highlight of the event promoted electricity, as reported in the Brookings County Sentinel.
Soon the center of the room was cleared and the entertainment was opened,” the newspaper reported. At once the central figure of the whole bright array was Mrs. E. E. Gaylord, who represented the Brookings Electric Light Company. On a sign she carried, on her crown and on her costume glistened a multitude of small glass globes and her appearance on the floor was the signal for loud applause. When she took her place and each globe was transformed into a dazzling electric light, the wonder and the admiration of the vast audience was manifested by hearty and continued applause.
At that time, the city had just five electric street lights and about 30 town with electric service. The service was provided by individual generators (then called dynamos) manufactured by Mrs. Gaylords husband, who was considered an electronic genius and managed the Brookings Electric Light Company. Most of the shows audience had seen electric lights before, but were in awe of how Mrs, Gaylord could light up the light bulbs.
As the Sentinel explained, Mr. Gaylord had placed one of his small dynamos near the Opera House, strung copper wire under the house floor that was connected to small copper plates on the Opera House floor. Mrs. Gaylords costume included 21 light bulbs on the crown she wore, the banner she carried, and the costume she wore, all connected to copper plates on the soles of her shoes.
When she stepped on the wired floor plates, the more than 20 light bulbs flashed up and she stood clad in natures resplendent robe, the Sentinel reported. Her display was the talk of the town for months. Incidentally, Horace Fishback was one of five directors of the Brookings Electric Light Company.
It wasnt long after that locally produced light show that the lights of the 19th century were dimming and Brookings was changing rapidly.
Bert Olds and Horace Fishback sold their original building and its Community Hall in 1886 to Mrs. C. S. Brooke for $2,200, and soon opened as a new bank about a block away.
The old Community Hall would continue to host events for several years as did the Opera House, but as churches and the college grew, there was no longer a need for a Community Hall.
The Opera House had enjoyed entertainment success, but from the start it proved to be a failed business venture. The Brookings National Guard bought the building in 1888, but in 1893 the state legislature discontinued grants for National Guard buildings, and it was put up for sale. In 1898 it was purchased to become the Palace Livery Barn.
The barn was condemned in the 1920s and torn down in 1927.
In 1914, a new Grand Opera House was built in Brookings for special events, and perhaps its part in Brookings entertainment life might be another Masters degree thesis awaiting a curtain call.
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