Bethel Opera House (1860)

The Opera House in Bethel, located at 186 Greenwood Avenue, was built in 1860 [or perhaps as early as 1848?] by Augustus A. Fisher, a hat manufacturer. It housed a hat factory on the first floor, with a public hall above known as Fisher’s Hall. After a fire damaged the roof in the late nineteenth century, it was replaced with the current broad-eaved roof with Italianate brackets. The building later became Nichols’ Opera House, named after John F. Nichols, who ran it as an entertainment complex, with theater, roller skating rink and billiards. After his death in 1918, Daniel Brandon used the lower floor of the building as a brush factory and showed silent movies upstairs in what was called the Barnum Theatre. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was called Leeja Hall and was used for town meetings and as a high school gym. Since that time, the building has been used by various businesses, with an art gallery and later a photography studio above and a restaurant below.