Eureka Springs City Auditorium

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The interior of the Eureka Springs City Auditorium.
Photo by Jeremy Mason McGraw.
Photo courtesy of Eureka Springs City Auditorium.

Eureka Springs City Auditorium

32 South Main Street

Eureka Springs, AR

Website:  Eureka Springs City Auditorium

The Treasure:  The historic City Auditorium continues to offer a wide range of entertainment in the heart of the charming resort town of Eureka Springs.

Accessibility:  Check the City Auditorium calendar for upcoming events and make plans to catch a show while in town!

Background:  Water cures, also known as hydropathy, were all the rage in Victorian times. Sites throughout the United States and Europe lured visitors with promises of the natural curing properties of their spring water. Not only did Eureka Springs in Arkansas have the necessary springs, it even had the support of Native American legends that attested to the healing powers of the water.

In 1856, Dr. Alvah Jackson began proclaiming the benefits of the local spring as a cure for eye ailments. His “Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water” enjoyed some popularity, but the real transformation of the town into a major spa and tourist destination occurred through the vigorous promotion efforts of Jackson’s friend J. B. Saunders in the late 1870s. By 1881, Eureka Springs was Arkansas’ fourth largest city and it climbed to second largest by 1889, benefiting from both the health-giving springs and a railroad station to bring the tourists.

Dedication plaque on the City Auditorium.
Photo courtesy of Eureka Springs City Auditorium.

The public interest in these natural springs waned by the 1920s, leading Eureka Springs Mayor Claude A. Fuller to invest in new attractions for his city. Under his leadership, the City Auditorium was built in 1928 to offer music and theater in the center of town. The City Auditorium opened with a performance featuring John Phillip Sousa and his 67-piece band.

Notes from the Editor:  I was enchanted by my visit to Eureka Springs, a small city loaded with friendliness and charm. Well-preserved Victorian buildings line the steep and winding streets. Truthfully, it’s a bit of a maze, with no right-angle street intersections to be found—but it’s not large enough to get seriously lost either. I’d say it’s a prime place to park the car and go exploring on foot. However, if those steep sidewalks look too daunting, there is a trolley service available to convey you around town.

For years, Eureka Springs has nourished arts communities, with writers and painters forming colonies to find inspiration amid the beauty of the natural setting. Today, the city boasts more than twenty art galleries, as well as stores that specialize in traditional Ozark crafts. With Bentonville, home of the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, just forty miles away, Eureka Springs will doubtless continue to build its reputation as an important arts center for the Ozarks.

Thorncrown Chapel interior in 2006.
Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Other Recommended Sites:  The unexpected culmination of our visit to the Ozarks was our trip to Thorncrown Chapel. Located just a five-minute drive into the hills west of Eureka Springs, Thorncrown Chapel is a glass-enclosed chapel inspired by the Prairie Style architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Thorncrown Chapel’s architect was E. Fay Jones, who designed this sublime building to complement the beautiful surrounding Ozark landscape. The lattice-like wooden structure supports 425 windows comprising over 6,000 square feet of glass.

Thorncrown Chapel exterior.
Photo by Clinton Steeds.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Here’s noted architect and educator Paul Heyer describing Thorncrown Chapel in his book American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth Century: “The rhythmic quality of the structure set against the calm magnitude of nature creates a sense of sacred space... Thorncrown Chapel succeeds on yet another level, that of the symbolic: Using massing reminiscent of rural covered bridges, the image of shelter on the road of life is in keeping with the ecclesiastical understanding of nature. This is where regionalism through site and climate can play a vital role in making architecture not personally idiosyncratic in an ego or alternatively abstract-rule-applied sense, but special in a locally sensitive and relative sense.”

The exterior of the Eureka Springs City Auditorium.
Photo courtesy of the Eureka Springs City Auditorium.

Tour America's History Itinerary

Friday’s destination:  Camp Ouachita
Monday’s destination:  Clover Bend Historic Site

© 2012 Lee Price