Thunderstorms rolled through much of the last day of August, but not consistently – the sun would be out for a while, then a new one would rumble through, with heavy downpours for a quarter hour and then gone – as if to remind us who live on the ground that it’s been an intermittently wet summer. Which is going away now. Summer is, that is. We’ll see about the wetness.

The Woodstock Opera House sent me down a peculiar rabbit hole today. Just who, I wondered, was Patti Rosa? But first, some views of the structure, completed in 1890 and a grand artifact from the period, designed by Elgin architect Smith Hoag, but built by local contractor Simon Brink.

“The year was 1888 and [Woodstock] Alderman WW. Cook made the motion to purchase a lot on the downtown square in Woodstock, which had remained vacant since a fire in 1871,” according to the modern City of Woodstock web site. “Having grown tired of holding council meetings in a local attic, the proposal was to build a City Hall worthy of the town and its citizens. However, when put to a vote the motion came to a tie and it rested on Mayor Merritt Joslyn to cast the deciding vote. Of course he voted in the affirmative…”

“…on September 4, 1890 the grand opening was held with the Patti Rosa Player’s performance of Margery Daw.

“Throughout the next few decades the building functioned as the center of activity for Woodstock and McHenry County. The City offices, library, police and fire department occupied the first floor of the building and the Opera House was contained in the second and third floors. With a capacity of almost 700 movable seats, the Opera House functioned as a public space for a variety of activities including, theatrical events, concerts, weddings, dances, wrestling matches, the annual strawberry festival and graduation commencements to name a few.”

In more recent years, the place has been a venue for live entertainment. I’ve seen a number of performances myself there over the years, such as Al Stewart in 2012.

I was glad to see a portrait of Mayor Joslyn in the lobby of the opera house. Without him, it might not exist at all, or in some other, less elegant form. (I removed the glare from the image below.)

The theater puts its greatest hits on a plaque.

But not Patti Rosa. Who would expect that? First is only first and that was probably by chance. Information about Patti Rosa is slender, at least to a not-rigorous amount of Googling. But there is some, such as a review of one of her shows in London.

Patti Rosa at the Jodrell Theatre, London, January 1889:

Patti Rosa, after much preliminary puffing, and accompanied by a newspaper called the Patti Rosa Illustrated News, of which copies were given away on the first night, has made her appearance at the hitherto unlucky Jodrell. Bob, the hotchpotch she appears in, is not a remarkable work of dramatic art; but it is a filling vehicle for the eccentricities, peculiarities, and whimsicalities of the fair and plump Patti, who sings, dances, coquettes, and banjoes her way into the good graces of a few easily-pleased Americans. In her line of business she is, however, what is called ”clever.”’

— The Man of the World, London, Saturday, 12 January 1889)

Some images. All public domain, nicked from various places online.

This one, a faded relic in the most literal sense.

I’ll give it a little revival.

Another fuzzy image of yore.

Looks like a minor hallucination in making this, but I doubt that Patti would have minded.

Patti Rosa’s heyday, and she did seem to have a heyday around the time of Benjamin Harrison’s administration, didn’t last, not even into the 20th century.

Posted at Footlight Notes:

‘NEW YORK, Aug 6. Patti Rosa, a well known soubrette, died at St. Francis hospital from the affects [sic] of an operation performed for appendicitis. She was the wife of [the actor manager] John W. Dunne.’ (The Trenton Times, 6 August 1894, p. 8b)

Well, that’s too bad. Otherwise she might have lived long enough to be an equally forgotten silent screen comedienne.

At this point, there are a number of rabbit sub-holes, or maybe informational tunnels, to wander. I decided not to.

Such as what a soubrette is, or was, and how that particular stock character, or in this case, a kind of shtick, faded from common awareness. Or did it morph into something like the manic pixie dream girl? I’m couldn’t say.

Or the play Margery Daw, which was probably a high-jinks version of an equally obscure short story by one Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Or whether there is a copy of Patti Rosa Illustrated News anywhere in the world, or whether it’s a lost as Genghis Khan’s tomb, except that no one cares.

Or what was it that made the Jodrell Theatre “unlucky”?

Or the song “Shootin’ Craps.” There’s a revival for that song in the right musical hands.

Or the play Mizpah, or its author, one Con. T. Murphy, Esq. Forgotten, and probably with reason.