Effort to Restore Howell Opera House
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Christiana Ciolac

Howell Opera House has been for the past 75 years.

Only a handful of people really knew it was there at all, silently peering over a busy street corner in the downtown blocks of Howell.

It had closed a lifetime ago but now the brick lined stair well is open once again and hopes are as steep as the steps that the once glorious hall owe opera house will find its voice once more.

"It's a walk back in time. It really is."

Howell Opera House

For the last 75 of the 125 years, the opera house has been little more than a storage closet for the hardware store at the bottom of its staircase. Now, thanks to some very stubborn dreamers, the Howell Opera House appears poised to play out a new future in its own foot lights.

Performers used to stick posters on the wall informing the crowd about the show.

"These are old play bills and posters that were stuck on the wall primarily by the actors and performing. This is the kind of stuff that just makes us feel that we have an obligation to save this building and keep some of these touches from our past," said Jeffrey Stamm.

Jeffrey Stamm is one of those stubborn dreamers. In 1979, he was singing for the Metropolitan Opera in New York and did an understudy with the great Pavarotti. The life and the road led him back to Howell and to saving an old opera house.

As president of the Livingston Arts Council, he has been the tenor voice of the old theater.

The chandeliers are all original.

"That's all original: the screens, and the backdrops. The gas lamps in the walls are all still here and original chandelier is up in the ceiling and that was from 1880," Stamm said.

"You really do have a gem in the raw here. It needs polishing."

"It needs a lot of work. There are so few of these buildings left."

Seventy years of silence have not done the place many favors. The paint is peeled and faded, the windows rattle, the floor boards creek but the history remains under that veneer of dust, dirt and animal droppings and it is the history that the dreamers clearly see when others, perhaps, cannot.

"I've had all kinds of artists' experiences in my life and I would like to be able to see this reach out for educational opportunities," said Stamm. "This community needs the hands-on experiences for the young people and there's more to life than television."

The opera house

Of course, times have changed since 1880 when it took only $11,000 to build the opera house. The price now ranges somewhere in the millions and that's a lot of money, but no one is lining up to say it can't be done.

"Those of us that have really committed ourselves to it can already see the building finished. I mean, it's really quite a vision of what can be and wishing that we could go back and see how exactly it was. That would be fun."

Just when the foot lights will glow again or when an anxious crowd may again fill the lobby, no one can say with certainty at this point, but the dreamers, now at least own the building. When it comes right down to it, it's just a great dream about a town's history and how to preserve a little piece of it for the future.

"That's our goal. We want to bring the building back. It deserves it. It's been waiting an awful long time," said Stamm.

Go to the Livingston Arts Council website for more information and photos on the Howell Opera House.

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