Shirley Opera House
opera house in Atwood, Kansas
The Shirley Opera House, located at 503 Main St. in Atwood, Kansas, was built in 1907. It is an Early Commercial style building that has served as a theater and as a department store. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
It was deemed significant for historical association with entertainment in the community and for its architecture. Its NRHP nomination noted that its construction "coincided with the building of the Rawlins County Courthouse, the creation of permanent sidewalks, and the establishment of a public waterworks. The commercial block building style combined with elegant Victorian detailing established it as a building of merit, meant to bring distinction and permanence to a community that had recently celebrated 25 years of existence." Its upstairs area served the community for political rallies, graduations, dances, and debates, as well as for musicals and traveling road shows. The main floor area was used by various commercial businesses. The building is the sole surviving commercial building of its era in Atwood that has not been significantly altered.
“Shirley Opera House” enters the record as opera house in Atwood, Kansas. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shirley, Opera and House can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Shirley Opera House” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Shirley, Opera and House provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14689938. Authority coordinates are 39.808, -101.040. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907 and 2007.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shirley Opera House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.