Groundsite Image Gallery
Bowersock Opera House
Artist: Hughes, Langston
Height: 0.000"
Width: 0.000"
*Bowersock Opera House, now known as Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St. (1912)
Langston Hughes attended theatrical and film events here as a boy. Among the shows he saw were The Pink Lady and The Firefly. He saw performers like dancer Ruth St. Denis, and Sothern and Marlowe. Though African Americans were allowed to attend events, they were required to sit in the balcony.
The left side of the building was the electric streetcar station and later, through the 1970s, a bus station.
Now known as Liberty Hall, the building was erected in 1912. It is in the beaux arts style with details of leaded glass and Doric columns. The building was one of the first downtown Lawrence buildings to be renovated in the mid-1980s.