Stuart’s Opera House

This second-story playhouse in Nelsonville opened in 1879. During its glory, the opera house housed a variety of events including professional touring shows of vaudeville, musicals, minstrel shows, and melodramas, community theatre, meetings, high school graduations, recitals, religious events, and dances. Famous performers graced the opera house stage, including Elsie Janis known as "the queen of Vaudeville," vaudeville's first great magician, Howard Thurston, and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" composer George M. Cohen. It was truly the focal point of all community activity. The theatre remained in operation until 1924.For more than 50 years, the opera house sat empty with no performances or activity, yet with all its scenery and theatrical equipment preserved. Then in 1976, the Hocking Valley Museum of Theatrical History, Inc (HV-MOTH), a non-profit organization, formed to restore and sustain Stuart's Opera House as a viable theatre and cultural arts center. In 1979, Stuart's Opera House was entered on the National Register of Historic Buildings. After extensive renovation and restoration, Stuart's reopened in 1997.