Wysor Grand Opera House

Jacob Henry Wysor, a prominent early businessman in Muncie who made his fortune in real estate, milling and the California Gold Rush, built the Wysor Grand Opera House in 1892 at the corner of Jackson and Mulberry Streets. The building was designed by architect H. W. Matson in the Romanesque Revival style. It served for decades as a major venue for theatrical performances and later a movie house.

The interior of the Wysor Grand was regarded as quite ornate and richly appointed for its time. It featured a large stage with ample rigging, a prominent proscenium, boxes, balconies, and generally elegant up to four different plays or stage productions in one evening. Among its celebrated performances was a 1892 production of Shakespeare's Richard III with noted actor Thomas Keene, who praised the theatre's design, reportedly saying he had never seen “a more beautiful or perfect theater.”

The Wysor Grand Opera House was razed after decades of changing uses and downtown decline: originally built as a late-19th-century venue for touring plays, opera and vaudeville, it gradually shifted into a motion-picture house by the 1920s and spent its final decades screening films. Business pressures and the mid-century contraction of downtown entertainment culminated by its final closing in September 1961 and demolition in 1963 as part of the wave of downtown redevelopment occurring in that era.

For more information, visit the following:
https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/KblGrdArc/id/2600/rec/1/
https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/sg/search/searchterm/Wysors%20Grand%20Opera%20House%20(Muncie%2C%20Ind.)