Our History

Celebrating Our 125th Anniversary

Much of the information in the Our History pages was excerpted from an article in The Times Of Northwest Indiana written by Porter/LaPorte Editor Doug Ross that was published on February 15, 2018. You can CLICK HERE to read the full article.

Because it's hard to fit all of our history on one pages, we've broken it into segments as follows:

Introduction (This Page)

Getting Ready To Build

The Early Days

The Building Today

Ghosts In The House

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"The story of the Memorial Opera House, which marks its 125th anniversary with a celebration and ribbon cutting Thursday, begins with a Civil War veteran’s eloquent speech at a Grand Army of the Republic meeting.

County historian Kevin Pazour, who's also the executive director of the Porter County Museum next door, pointed Tuesday to J.R. Drapier’s speech around 1893, as recounted by The Vidette-Messenger on March 25, 1960.

'The Chicago (World’s) Fair is hatching a lot of queer ducks, all out to sell the citizens something in the name of the old soldiers, telling those citizens they must make heroes out of us. We don’t want to be heroes,' Drapier said.

“We want to do something for our home town rather than have the town do something for us,” he continued.

That prompted Valparaiso’s Chaplain Brown Post of the GAR to persuade the Indiana General Assembly to change state law to allow the $1,000 given each county for a Civil War moment to instead erect a building.

The Memorial Opera House is one of just a few Civil War monuments that continue to be used for their original purpose."

- Doug Ross, The Times Of Northwest Indiana