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The Washing Light Infantry Corps was a ^[1]

Albaugh’s Grand Opera House was completed in 1884. Constructed by the Washington Light Infantry Corps of the District of Columbia, Lieut. Col. William G. Moore. The Armory, which began construction April 10, 1844, became known in the last 1920s as Poli's, located at the northeast corner of 15th and E Streets, northwest, with the entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Washington Light Infantry Corps lost its identity when it merged into the District of Columbia National Guard.^[1]

The theater, billed as "only a trifle smaller than the Metropolitan Opera House in New York," was built in conjunction with an armory located on Washington's Fifteenth Street, near Pennsylvania Avenue, just a few blocks from the White House.

Washington Light Infantry Corps Armory, which housed:

Allen's Grand Opera House, 1425 Staughton Street, N.W. (renamed around 1906 Belmont Street), managed by Edward H. Allen. –

Ormond H. Butler

900 E Capitol (residence in 1899)

Butler managed the Grand Opera Theater for two weeks.

The Grand Opera Theater was sold at auction to Burke and Chase

Located at 15th Street NW and E Street with its entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue. Originally built as an armory for the Washington Light Infantry Rifles, it was designed by architectural firm Gray and Page, a partnership of William Bruce Gray (1849–1906) and Harvey Lindsley Page (1859–1934) that ran from 1878 to 1885. Prior to completion of the building, it was leased to local theatre manager John W. Albaugh (1837 –1909) who opened it as Albaugh's Grand Opera House November 10, 1884, with Emma Abbott's Grand English Opera Company, starring Abbot in the title role as [Semiramide, Queen of Babylon, in Rossini's Semiramide. There was a rifle range in the basement.

• Albaugh's Grand Opera House, operated by John W. Albaugh (1837–1909) from 1884 to 1894
• Allen's Grand Opera House, operated by Edward H. Allen, beginning January 28, 1895, through June 1896.
• Kernan's Grand Opera House, operated by James L. Kernan and associates – George W. Rife, Ernest Knabe, and Albert Carr, all of Baltimore, beginning June 1896.
• Butler's Grand Opera House; Ormond Hook Butler operated it for two-weeks, beginning October 25, 1898, in an attempt to rescue the facility from financial duress and dilapidation. Butler had previously, from 1894 to 1895, managed the Bijou Theatre, at Ninth Street and Louisiana Avenue (erected as a carriage house in 1850, razed in 1931). The Grand Opera Theater was sold at auction to Gates and Staples, who, in turn, leased it to Burke and Chase, a Western vaudeville management firm, who reopended the Grand January 16, 1899.
• Chase's Opera House, operated by Plimpton Beverly Chase (1860–1938), and owned by Burke and Chase, beginning January 16, 1899. Later, operated under the auspices of P.B. Chase's Enterprises, H. Winnifred de Witt, general manager.

• Plimpton was charged for violating the civil rights law for denying William T. Ferguson a seat on November 14, 1899.^[2][3][4] Ferguson's wife, Missouri Butler Ferguson, who worked in the U.S. Printing Office, prevailed in a similar case in 1890, when she and Ferguson's mother, Martha Ellen Wilson, were denied ice cream from Jacob Fussell II (1819–1912), an ice cream merchant and manufacturer.^[5] Fussell is chronicled as the first in history to wholesale ice cream. But, as an irony to his civil rights violation, the first to make ice cream is attributed to Augustus Jackson, an African American confectioner from Philadelphia who introduced it in 1832.^[6]
• On April 2, 1908, a lawsuit was brought against P. B. Chase by Mary Stewart, an African American, who is employed in the family of a government official. She demanded $3,000 damages, alleging that on account of her color, she was refused admittance to the theatre when she presented tickets at the door for herself and her employer's two children.^[7]

Several operators later it was re-named the New Grand Theatre in January 1899 and became a vaudeville theatre. Movies became a regular part of the program.

It was taken over by Sylvester Zefferino Poli (1858–1937) in 1912 when it was renamed Poli's Theatre. In 1922, it was totally gutted and remodeled to the plans of noted architect Thomas White Lamb. The upper tier of seating had been removed as had the third tier of boxes. The main balcony was replaced and 1,200-seats were installed in the orchestra seating area. New York based artist Thomas [sic] Dougherty – James Henry Daugherty (1889–1974)?? – painted three large murals, two on the auditorium side-walls and one inside the entrance. It reopened November 27, 1922, with a pre-New York production of Hayseed, or The Villain Still Pursued Her, book and lyrics by Albert Ellsworth Thomas (1872–1947) and Brian Hooker, music by George Gershwin & William Merrigan Daly.^[8]

The U.S. Government announced plans to demolish the theatre before the expiration of the lease in June 1939, Poli and the Shubert Organization sued. But the government won and the theatre was demolished to make way for the Federal Triangle.

• link

• Rev. Henry Allen Griffith (1854–1946), Episcopal Church
• Griffith, Helen Stuart (maiden; 1888–1966). The Sign Language of Our Faith. Washington, D.C.: published by the Author, 1824 16th St. NW. (1939). OCLC 752292601. Griffith graduated May 25, 1906, from the Hamilton Institute (founded 1900), a boarding and day school for girls and young ladies at 1607 H St., NW, opposite the White House, Phoebe Hamilton Seabrook (née Phoebe Catherine Hamilton; 1853–1927), principal, whose great-grandfather, Paul Hamilton (1762–1816), was the 42nd Governor of South Carolina. She was married to Joseph Whaley Seabrook (1835–1906).

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