Birch Opera House
The 1200-seat Birch Opera House was opened in 1877 by carriage mogul
and arts patron James Birch, next to the
mansion occupied by the Birch
family. Over the next five decades, it hosted such performers
as Billie Burke, Buffalo Bill Cody and John L. Sullivan, and indoor
productions of Ben Hur, complete with horses.
After the advent of the automobile destroyed the market for Birch's
carriages and rickshaws, his factory went out of business, and the Opera
House closed in 1927.
Today, Burlington's Post Office stands on the site of the former Opera
House. The Birch name is still seen by passers-by every day, on the base
of a cast-iron statue of Mercury. An English copy of a sixteenth-century
work by Flemish sculptor Jean Boulogne, the statue was erected in 1881
as the centerpiece of the Opera House, and now stands in front of the
Post Office.
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