New Year’s Eve, 1869: A Great Day for Battle Creek
New Year’s Eve was a very big deal in Battle Creek in 1869. The city had been incorporated 10 years earlier and continued to grow and grow. And on this New Year’s, the city’s 5,800 residents were buzzing as Hamblin’s Opera House opened. On December 31, 1869, an audience of 1700 attended a program of singers and instrumentalists.
The building cost $40,000. A historical account published a few years later stated, “One of the chief attractions of Battle Creek is its commodious opera-house. Up to 1868, the city possessed no regular place of amusement of sufficient size to induce large first-class theatrical troops to visit the city. In that year, however, Mr. A. C. Hamblin, with his characteristic enterprise, erected a handsome and substantial building, which he fitted up in elegant style, and introduced in it all of the modern improvements and stage effects. The ceiling is beautifully frescoed, and the general ar