Across the street to the south is the second oldest building on the intersection, the Trinidad Opera House built in 1883 by the Jaffa brothers, early Jewish merchants. It is an often overlooked fact that many of the early settlers of the Old West and the builders of our towns – right alongside Hollywood’s gruff ranchers, brave school ma’arms, strong but fair saloon keepers, and prostitutes with hearts of gold – were real life Jewish merchants. The first of the Jaffa brothers, Sol, came to Trinidad in 1871 when he was 22, the town was about 10 years old, and the population was about 500. He was soon joined by his brothers Henry and Sam, and they opened the Jaffa Bros. General merchandise store. They apparently prospered, for 12 years later they built the Opera House. The ground floor has always been commercial space and on the corner was the Jaffa Bros. store. The wide staircase in the center of the Main Street front led to the opera house auditorium upstairs, which seated 800 and featured a magnificent oval stained glass skylight. It was a sensation and immediately became the social center as well as the entertainment center for the little frontier town.
Although the core integrity of the structure has been compromised by age, the building’s exterior still has some of the finest stonework in the city. Note in particular the designs on the building’s second story columns. They look somewhat like Southwest Indian symbols and seem out of place on a Victorian building. However similar designs decorate another nearby building constructed a few years after the Opera House, so either the designs are not so out of character, or else there was a local stoneworker who favored Southwest Native American designs.
As with most so-called opera houses in the West, precious little opera was ever performed here. However, when the curtain came down for the final time in 1906, the stage had boasted some of the nation’s finest entertainers but had also featured, in the words of a local editor, “some of the rottenest barnstorming aggregations that ever escaped scalping.” Between bookings, the place was frequently used for socials, dances and gatherings of various clubs and leagues, including an anti-cigarette league in the early 1900s - nothing is new!
