Chautauqua Auditorium (Boulder, Colorado)
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Chautauqua Auditorium
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The Chautauqua Auditorium
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| Location | Boulder, Colorado |
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| Coordinates | 39°59′51.42″N 105°16′46.64″W / 39.9976167°N 105.2796222°WCoordinates: 39°59′51.42″N 105°16′46.64″W / 39.9976167°N 105.2796222°W |
| Built | 1898 |
| Architect | F.E. Kidder and E.R. Rice |
| NRHP Reference # | 74000562 |
| CSRHP # | 5BL.362 |
| Added to NRHP | January 21, 1974 |
The Chautauqua Auditorium, located at the Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder, Colorado, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 21, 1978. The wooden building was constructed for the first season of the Colorado Chautauqua in 1898, and through the years has been a venue for many lectures, musical performances, and motion pictures both primitive and modern.
On May 12, 1898, construction of the Chautauqua Auditorium commenced; it was completed in time for the opening of the first Texas-Colorado Chautauqua season on July 4, 1898. The wooden building had dirt floors, covered with sawdust, and simple pine benches.
The center section of the dirt and sawdust floor was replaced with a concrete floor in 1918, and at the same time some of the original pine benches were replaced with 586 "opera chairs".
In the 1970s, about the time the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, it was in a dilapidated condition. A combination of two factors—the NRHP designation and the decision of the Colorado Music Festival to call the Chautauqua Auditorium its home—provided the impetus for a general renovation of the structure. Broken seats were replaced, the roof was repaired, and loose boards were reattached or replaced. The overall design of the building, however, remained unchanged. The acoustics of this wooden building remain as they have been.
As of 2006, it is still possible to see daylight through the cracks in the walls of the Auditorium. However, it is no longer possible to see the moon and stars through cracks in the roof.
Although the Auditorium was mostly intended for lectures, sermons, dramatic readings, live musical performances, and variety acts similar to vaudeville, it was also a venue for motion pictures right from the beginning. In 1898, the film industry was in its experimental infancy. The evening Chautauqua program for July 21, 1898, was "Edison's Genuine Projectoscope, Colorscopic Diorama and Wargraph, with Music, reproducing scenes of the war with Spain." The exhibitor traveled with his own projection equipment, a practice that would persist at the Chautauqua Auditorium until 1918.
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