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Community Corner

The Story of the Wayne Opera House Fire

The theater burned down in a 1914 blaze.

Something of the history of one of the oldest buildings in Wayne, the Opera House, has been given from time to time in this column. Recently some further information concerning it has come to the writer, particularly the details of the devastating fire that occurred there in 1914.

Located at the northeast corner of Lancaster Pike and North Wayne avenue, this structure was one of the landmarks of early Wayne. Built in the early sixties by Henry Askin, one of the founders of Wayne, it was originally known as Lyceum Hall. There debates, lectures and amateur theatricals were held. In 1889 the Wayne Estate enlarged and improved the stage which had been a very small one. New scene shrifts and a new proscenium were added. A few years later the third floor was renovated to furnish quarters for Wayne Lodge No. 581, F. and A. M. Still to be discerned on the northeast corner of the building at second floor height is a keystone with a masonic emblem set in the masonry.

In the early nineteen hundreds the Wayne Post Office moved into this building from its former location in what is now Frankenfield’s Fish Market. This was after extensive remodeling and enlargement had been made to the old Opera House. Thirty-five years ago this month, on December 30, 1914, an early morning blaze, the origin of which has never been definitely ascertained, practically destroyed the Opera House itself in addition to the office of the Wayne Plumbing and Heating Company and the Counties Gas and Electric Company located in what is now the Wayne Men’s Store. Welsh and Park Hardware store, predecessors of George W. Park and Son, Hardware, ahd its quarters in a large store on the Pike side of the Opera House. Charles M. Davis , real estate dealer, had his office on this side of the building, also. Both the store and the office were badly damaged by water, especially the large stock of hardware in Welsh and Park.

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