Featured Landmark: The Auditorium

Our featured landmark, the Auditorium, was dedicated  on March 4, 2017, by the Native Sons of the Golden West and its Grass Valley based Quartz Parlor. Located at 161 Mill Street, it is better known to most of you as the current home of the Ashley furniture store, formerly Hedman’s.

 

Before it became a furniture store, it had a colorful history. In the 19th century, it was the site of Argall’s Opera House, owned by Charles E. Clinch. That building burned down on July 30, 1896, in a fire which took down the entire block of Mill Street between Neal and Bank Streets. In 1900, a group of fraternal organizations including the Native Sons and the Knights of Pythias constructed a three story building on the site, which opened on February 2, 1901. The principal tenant on the main floor was the Auditorium Theater, with a capacity of 600 on the floor and 250 in a gallery. The second floor of the building had rooms for the fraternal lodges; the third floor was a banquet hall and the basement housed the kitchen and the National Guard armory. The building also housed the Grass Valley City Hall for a while.

 

In 1911, Grass Valley native William Williams, who happened to be a member of many of the lodges housed in the building, leased the Auditorium as a movie theater. In 1922-3, he remodeled the theater, installing a heating and cooling system, more modern lighting, and increased seating, and renamed it the Strand Movie Theater. It continued in operation until April 22 1942.

Subsequently the building was the home of the F.S. Rasco & Co. store, and since 1972, the Hedman, now Ashley, furniture store.