Alliance, Ohio
Marchand's Opera House Collapse
June 2, 1886
FELL INTO RUINS
The Alliance, O., Opera House A Complete
Wreck
Alliance, O., June 2. – At 4:10 this
afternoon there was heard a terrible cracking,
crashing, and rumbling noise, and a single brick
was seen to fall from the southeast corner of
the second story of
Marchand’s Opera House, which was a
four-story brick block, eighty feet square,
located at the corner of Main and Fifth streets,
two squares from the depot. The entire imposing,
massive structure immediately fell in a confused
mass of dusty ruins. Three of the four store
rooms on the first floor were occupied by
business firms and the fourth room was to be
occupied in a few days. In the store rooms were
about a dozen people, all of whom escaped, as
also did several occupants of room in the second
story. Mr. Marchand,
the business manager of the block,
was sitting in his office on the 2nd floor when
he noticed the plastering cracking. He rushed
frantically out and down the front stairway,
screaming for everybody to run as the house was
falling. Harvey
Laughlin, attorney, office also on
the 2nd floor, hearing the confusion, ran for
the side stairway, and rushed down while bricks
and mortar fell thick all about him, he being
the last to leave the building. The third floor
was the opera house, and the fourth floor an
attic and storage place. No lives were lost.
Several new coaches standing on the Fort
Wayne track in the rear of the building were
crushed by the falling wall; while the east wall
in falling caught a two-story frame adjacent and
crushed it; also damaging the next house east.
The roar of the falling building was heard a
mile away. The noise and the alarm of the fire
bell bro’t [sic] many people from the
surrounding country.
The west wall still stands to the 2nd story,
and thus to a great extent protected two of the
business rooms below. Everything else was
entirely destroyed, including the fine scenery,
etc., of the opera house.
WHY DID IT FALL?
The building was erected in 1868 at a cost of
$75,000. During the erection a heavy rain storm
materially affected the walls, but they were
fixed as best they could and the work completed.
Architects and builders have often pronounced it
safe, while others did not consider it so.
Within a few weeks the east wall began to sag
out and the doors of the building closed with
difficulty. Only yesterday morning
J. T. Weybrecht,
builder and contractor, examined the house and
informed Mr. Marchand
that repairs would be necessary to make it safe.
Those repairs were to have begun tomorrow.
A THOUSAND TIMES WORSE CALAMITY PROBABLY
AVERTED.
On Tuesday evening the Board of Education
decided to have the annual commencement
exercises of the city schools in the opera hall
on June 25th, notwithstanding the protests of
the parents of the graduating class. Had the
building stood up until that day, and the
proposed repair not been equal to the weight of
humanity that would then have assembled there,
what a heart-rending tragedy might have
occurred. It makes one shudder to think of it.
The Ohio Democrat, New Philadelphia, OH 10
June 1886
Transcribed by
Jenni Lanham. Thank you,
Jenni!
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