Pike's Opera House, later renamed the Grand Opera House, was a theatre in New York City on the northwest corner of 8th Avenue and 23rd Street, in Chelsea, Manhattan. It was constructed in 1868 on a grand scale, for distiller and entrepreneur Samuel N. Pike (1822 - Dec.7, 1872) of Cincinnati at a cost of a million dollars and survived until 1960 as an RKO movie theater. Public housing was built in its place as part of an urban renewal project.
Read more about Pike's Opera House: History
Famous quotes containing the words opera house, pike, opera and/or house:
“The opera house sparkled with tiers
And tiers of eyes, like mine enlarged by belladonna,”
—James Merrill (b. 1926)
“Did you ever hear tell of Sweet Betsy from Pike.
Who crossed the wide mountains with her lover Ike,”
—Unknown. Sweet Betsey from Pike (l. 1–2)
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“I always have felt strange when we came home
To the dark house after so long an absence,
And the key rattled loudly into place
Seemed to warn someone to be getting out
At one door as we entered at another.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)