Home | John Cooper on Oscar Wilde © 2026

Lecture Tour of America 1882

Writing and Research on Oscar Wilde

Cedar Rapids

Iowa

Greene's Opera House

Friday, April 28, 1882

The Decorative Arts

< Previous Lecture

Verification

Newspaper reports

The Decatur Herald, April 30, 1882, 1

The Cedar Rapids Times (weekly):

April 13, 1882, 3

April 20, 1882, 3

April 27, 1882, 3

May 4, 1882, 3

Venue

Greene's Opera House

Second Street, between First and A Avenues (now 113-117 Second Street NE), Cedar Rapids, IA

Built: 1879-80

Opened: December 27, 1880

Named for: George Greene, 1817–1880, justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, railroad entrepreneur

Capacity: c.1600 when built, not all seated

Closed as a theater: December 1921 for use as a movie theater

Converted: 1934 to an indoor parking garage for the Roosevelt Hotel

Condemned: 1968

Demolished: March 1969

Accommodation

No record is currently available as to whether Wilde stayed overnight in Cedar Rapids. If he did, it would most likely have been at the Northwestern Hotel.

John Cooper on Oscar Wilde © 2026