Our Story

In 1871, Civil War veteran and third cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jerome Byron Wheeler married Harriet Macy Valentine. Making him heir to the family-owned R.H. Macy, New York City’s largest dry goods store at the time and still in operation today as Macy’s department store.

In 1883, when Harriet became ill, the couple moved to Manitou Springs, Colorado for the dry climate and healing hot springs. When Wheeler heard about the silver strikes in the mountains, he sold his interest in Macy’s and headed to Aspen. In 1889, he built the four-story sandstone Hotel Jerome, and two blocks away, the Wheeler Opera House.

Built with peachblow sandstone quarried from the Frying Pan valley, construction took less than a year. The building housed Wheeler’s Bank on the corner, Louis Weinberg’s Haberdashery, and The Ladies Palace of Fashion. Aspen Mining & Smelting Company shared the second floor with the bank’s offices, an attorney, and a dentist. The basement housed Aspen’s finest “tonsorial parlor,” also known as a barbershop.

Wheeler’s gift to the community on the top floors, a public hall with a proscenium stage, seats in Moroccan leather, an azure ceiling studded with silver stars, clean steam heat, and electric lighting. Aspen was the first city west of the Divide to be wired for electricity. A buzz surrounded the Wheeler for weeks ahead of its Grand Opening Celebration. The demand for fine millinery overwhelmed local merchants to the point they took out newspaper ads declaring “We can take no more orders today, as it will tax our whole force to the utmost to complete engagements.”

On November 12th, 1912, around 10:30 pm, just hours after a silent movie screening, a fire started between the stage floor and dressing rooms below. The fire was quickly put out, leaving water damage to the retail offices and grocery. The following night, the theatre was back to business as usual with another movie screening.

On November 21st, another fire broke out. Starting at about 2:00 am in three different locations, the box seats, the locked ushers’ room, and the scenery onstage, Aspen’s reactions were swift and vengeful. The Aspen Democrat Times ran the headline, “Fiendish Firebugs Again Rampant in Our City, Wheeler Opera House Partially Destroyed, the Prettiest Little Structure of Its Kind Between Pueblo and Salt Lake City is Sacrificed to the Venom of a Degenerate Unfit to Remain Upon Earth”.

The Wheeler Opera House, just 23 years old, was boarded up and written off as another Aspen ruin. Only the retail spaces on the first and second floors remained occupied. In 1918, the City of Aspen purchased the Wheeler Opera House for the amount of back taxes owed on the property, $1,155.

In the 1940s, Aspen experienced a revival with the 10th Mountain Division training at Camp Hale and the interest of Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke of Chicago. Laying the foundations for Aspen’s ski industry and the legacy of The Aspen Idea, the integration of a healthy mind, body, and spirit to nurture the whole person. In 1949, the Goethe Bicentennial Convocation led to the founding of the Aspen Institute and Aspen Music Festival.

The Paepckes interest in the Wheeler sparked a communitywide effort to clean up the performance space, patch the fire-damaged walls and floors, and replace the leaking roof. Renowned architect Herbert Bayer created a spare design to include Japanese lanterns strung across the bottom of the balcony and a bare-bones stage with a simple orchestra shell. Benches provided seating and the coffered ceiling remained open, exposing the fire-charred beams.

As more visitors came to Aspen, the Wheeler’s modest renovations were no longer enough. Once again, architect Herbert Bayer took the Wheeler in a new direction, mixing the period Victorian look with a mid-century Bauhaus design. Box seats were revived as draped side stages, benches were replaced with used movie seats, and walls were painted a rich red with gold fleur de lis. A gold velvet curtain masked the stage, and the coffered ceiling was fully restored.