Fulton Opera House

OVERVIEW

A theatre on North Prince Street in Lancaster, built in 1852 and remodelled in 1873 and 1904, a National Historic Landmark and the oldest continuously working theatre in the country. It stands on the site of the Lancaster county jail, in whose yard, on 27 December 1763, the Paxton Boys massacred the fourteen Conestoga people sheltered there; part of the jail's wall is said to survive in the theatre's foundations.

HISTORY

Sarah Bernhardt, Mark Twain and the Barrymores played it; the Fulton company still does.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Lancaster's tradition puts the Conestoga on the stage and in the basement, alongside a stage-hand and an actress from the theatre's own past; LancasterOnline and the theatre's tours carry the accounts. The massacre is documented; the rest is what the building's people say.

VISITING

Performances year-round; tours by arrangement.