The Building Today

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Much of the information in the Our History pages was excerpted from an article in The Times Of Northwest Indiana written by Porter/LaPorte Editor Doug Ross that was published on February 15, 2018. You can CLICK HERE to read the full article.

The Building Today

“We’re such a disposable society,' MacDonald said, with new buildings not expected to stand nearly as long as the Memorial Opera House has.

'The building is in no structural danger or anything like that,' MacDonald said.

The county commissioners and County Council have been attentive to the building’s needs and deserve credit for preserving it, he said."

"An Indiana Department of Natural Resources grant is helping pay for an architect to do a thorough study of the building to determine what needs to be done to continue to preserve it and help determine priorities for those needs.

The window treatments were recently replaced, as was the main curtain for the stage. The fabric from them will be sent to a company that will create purses and other items from it, MacDonald said."

"The building has some surprises most visitors won’t see, including the VIP room upstairs where the Sons of Union Veterans — descendants of the GAR members who saw to it that the Memorial Opera House was built — continue to meet.

Backstage, the tradition of painting the names and dates of theatrical productions dates back to the 1960s.

'It’s just so cool,' MacDonald said. 'It’s almost like carbon dating."

- Doug Ross, The Times Of Northwest Indiana