The Newport Opera House is a historic civic building and performing arts venue at 20 Main Street in the heart of downtown Newport, the county seat of

Sullivan County, New Hampshire Sullivan County is a county in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. As of the 2020 census, the population was 43,063, making it the second-least populous county in New Hampshire. Its county seat is Newport. Sullivan County is included in the Cl ...

, United States. Built in 1886, it was billed as having the largest stage in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

north of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, and continues to serve as a performance venue today. The building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, as "Town Hall and Courthouse", in 1980, for its architecture and civic roles, and is a contributing property in the Newport Downtown Historic District.

Description and history

The Newport Opera House is located on the east side of Main Street in downtown Newport. The -story brick building, with its clock and bell tower, is the most prominent feature of Newport's historic downtown. Architecturally the building is of a restrained Queen Anne Victorian style, with Panel Brick elements. Its main block is capped by a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

, with a

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...

led brick cornice. Trim elements are mainly brick, but are accented with

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

panels. Windows on the ground floor are topped by segmented arches, while those on the second story have round-arch tops. The tower projects from the front facade, with the main entrance at its front. It has a belfry stage, which for a time housed the

Revere bell The Revere Bell was a gift to Singapore by Mrs. Maria Revere Balestier, the daughter of Paul Revere and wife of the first American Consul to Singapore, Joseph Balestier. Cast by the Revere Copper Company in Boston, Massachusetts, it is the only ...

that now stands in front of the building. Above the belfry stage the tower has a pyramidal roof from which gabled dormers project that house clock faces. The building was built in 1886 to replace the previous town hall and courthouse which had burned down in 1885. It was designed by Hiram Beckwith, a regionally prominent architect from Claremont. It served for many years as Newport's town hall and as the main courthouse for Sullivan County, and has long served the region as a performance space The rebuilt Opera House was noted to have the largest stage north of

. In 1974, the Opera House was restored, which concluded with the unveiling of the stage in 1976 and the production of ''

The Music Man ''The Music Man'' is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and ...

''. Image:The Newport Opera House, evening.jpg,

References

External links

Newport Opera House Association
{{NRHP in Sullivan County, New Hampshire Theatres in New Hampshire Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire Queen Anne architecture in New Hampshire Buildings and structures in Sullivan County, New Hampshire National Register of Historic Places in Sullivan County, New Hampshire Newport, New Hampshire Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in New Hampshire

Description and history

See also

References

External links