Historical Traverse City Opera House Circa 1891

I was in the Traverse City Opera House this last week and this building always amazes me. It seems to defy space as you enter the auditorium. The ceiling seems to extend several stories into the sky... The Traverse City Opera House stemmed from a partnership of three gentleman, all brother-in-laws, Frank Votruba, Anthony Bartak, and Charles Wilhelm, back in 1891. E.R. Prall of Pontiac was hired to design Traverse City's first facility to use electric light bulbs. With a ceiling height of 40+ feet and hardwood maple floors the opera house has excellent acoustics. The celings have painted clouds which are painted using a technique called Trompe-l' ceil. This art technique involves extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects really exist, instead of being just two-dimensional paintings. The name is derived from French for "trick the eye", from tromper - to deceive and L'ceil - the eye. The Traverse City Opera House as had many uses over the last 116 years, some include a meeting hall & auditorium, hosting concerts and traveling plays, vaudeville shows, high school graduations and dinners and balls. In 1920, a motion picture firm leased the opera house and closed it to avoid competition with its own film theaters. The city opera house was used briefly during the Depression for a WPA project crating miniature city buildings. In the early 1970s it was listed o the national and state historic registers. By the late 1970s the City Opera House Heritage Committee began raising money to restore the structure. In 1980, the opera house was given to Traverse City by the descendants of one of the original owners, Frank Votruba.

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