On July 9th, 1851, a group of local businessmen in Charlottesville, Virginia, decided to form a corporation dedicated to promoting culture and the arts in their small town. Valentine W. Southall, James Cochran, Thomas Wood, S.W. Ficklin, James W. Saunders and John Jones formed the Town Hall Corporation (note) and purchased the corner of Park and High Streets as the site for their shelter for culture from Samuel Leitch, Jr. for $750.00. The neo-classic Town Hall towered over many of the other buildings in downtown Charlottesville upon its completion in 1853.

Purchased by Jefferson Levy in 1887, the Levy Opera House (Town Hall) remained the center of culture for Charlottesville - a virtual museum of talent from the entire world - until the turn-of-the-century. In its small yet elegant chambers Charlottesville residents could hear and see the cultural highlights from the United States and Europe. Minstrels, Brass Bands, Operas, Ballets, etc, graced its stage. New York, the locus for theatre entertainment in nineteenth-century America, introduced to the United States performers such as the phenomenal opera prodigy, Adelina Patti, and the violin virtuoso, Ole Bull. Such performers would then conduct tours to different locations throughout the country to small-town audiences in their Town Halls, and Charlottesville provided no exception.

The dissemination of culture through the theatre circuits to the smaller localities of America rose during the late nineteenth-century. The desire for knowledge and the arts even affected a small college town, such as Charlottesville, which boasted of its most famous and cultured resident, Mr. Thomas Jefferson. As tours of travelling performers became more frequent and popular so did the sacralization of what had formerly been considered high-brow - Shakespeare and Mendelssohn no longer belonged to the privileged few, they now belonged to individuals across the United States, so long as one's town had an Opera House.

At the beginning of the twentieth-century, however, American theatre confronted its most fierce opponent - motion pictures. Charlottesville's small, antiquated, opera house proved to be unable to fight against the Jefferson Theatre, which housed a stage and an area for viewing motion pictures, when it opened its doors in October, 1912. By the end of that year, Charlottesville's center of culture, the rumored building where the beloved University of Virginia chant, "Wah-Hoo-Wah," began, lost the battle against movies and closed its doors to the theatrical arts.

On July 9th, 1851, a group of local businessmen in Charlottesville, Virginia, decided to form a corporation dedicated to promoting culture and the arts in their small town. Valentine W. Southall, James Cochran, Thomas Wood, S.W. Ficklin, James W. Saunders and John Jones formed the Town Hall Corporation (note) and purchased the corner of Park and High Streets as the site for their shelter for culture from Samuel Leitch, Jr. for $750.00. The neo-classic Town Hall towered over many of the other buildings in downtown Charlottesville upon its completion in 1853.

Purchased by Jefferson Levy in 1887, the Levy Opera House (Town Hall) remained the center of culture for Charlottesville - a virtual museum of talent from the entire world - until the turn-of-the-century. In its small yet elegant chambers Charlottesville residents could hear and see the cultural highlights from the United States and Europe. Minstrels, Brass Bands, Operas, Ballets, etc, graced its stage. New York, the locus for theatre entertainment in nineteenth-century America, introduced to the United States performers such as the phenomenal opera prodigy, Adelina Patti, and the violin virtuoso, Ole Bull. Such performers would then conduct tours to different locations throughout the country to small-town audiences in their Town Halls, and Charlottesville provided no exception.

The dissemination of culture through the theatre circuits to the smaller localities of America rose during the late nineteenth-century. The desire for knowledge and the arts even affected a small college town, such as Charlottesville, which boasted of its most famous and cultured resident, Mr. Thomas Jefferson. As tours of travelling performers became more frequent and popular so did the sacralization of what had formerly been considered high-brow - Shakespeare and Mendelssohn no longer belonged to the privileged few, they now belonged to individuals across the United States, so long as one's town had an Opera House.

At the beginning of the twentieth-century, however, American theatre confronted its most fierce opponent - motion pictures. Charlottesville's small, antiquated, opera house proved to be unable to fight against the Jefferson Theatre, which housed a stage and an area for viewing motion pictures, when it opened its doors in October, 1912. By the end of that year, Charlottesville's center of culture, the rumored building where the beloved University of Virginia chant, "Wah-Hoo-Wah," began, lost the battle against movies and closed its doors to the theatrical arts.

On July 9th, 1851, a group of local businessmen in Charlottesville, Virginia, decided to form a corporation dedicated to promoting culture and the arts in their small town. Valentine W. Southall, James Cochran, Thomas Wood, S.W. Ficklin, James W. Saunders and John Jones formed the Town Hall Corporation (note) and purchased the corner of Park and High Streets as the site for their shelter for culture from Samuel Leitch, Jr. for $750.00. The neo-classic Town Hall towered over many of the other buildings in downtown Charlottesville upon its completion in 1853.

Purchased by Jefferson Levy in 1887, the Levy Opera House (Town Hall) remained the center of culture for Charlottesville - a virtual museum of talent from the entire world - until the turn-of-the-century. In its small yet elegant chambers Charlottesville residents could hear and see the cultural highlights from the United States and Europe. Minstrels, Brass Bands, Operas, Ballets, etc, graced its stage. New York, the locus for theatre entertainment in nineteenth-century America, introduced to the United States performers such as the phenomenal opera prodigy, Adelina Patti, and the violin virtuoso, Ole Bull. Such performers would then conduct tours to different locations throughout the country to small-town audiences in their Town Halls, and Charlottesville provided no exception.

The dissemination of culture through the theatre circuits to the smaller localities of America rose during the late nineteenth-century. The desire for knowledge and the arts even affected a small college town, such as Charlottesville, which boasted of its most famous and cultured resident, Mr. Thomas Jefferson. As tours of travelling performers became more frequent and popular so did the sacralization of what had formerly been considered high-brow - Shakespeare and Mendelssohn no longer belonged to the privileged few, they now belonged to individuals across the United States, so long as one's town had an Opera House.

At the beginning of the twentieth-century, however, American theatre confronted its most fierce opponent - motion pictures. Charlottesville's small, antiquated, opera house proved to be unable to fight against the Jefferson Theatre, which housed a stage and an area for viewing motion pictures, when it opened its doors in October, 1912. By the end of that year, Charlottesville's center of culture, the rumored building where the beloved University of Virginia chant, "Wah-Hoo-Wah," began, lost the battle against movies and closed its doors to the theatrical arts.