Opera House, Andover, N.Y. 73.

Opera House, Andover, N.Y. 73.

A group of boys wearing knickers and caps stand outside a corner store at the intersection of streets in a downtown.The shop is one of several in a two-story brick building labeled "Auditorium" on one side. Other buidings are visible against the backdrop of a high, bare hill in the distance. This is one of a series of images made in upstate New York state by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to New England or upstate New York. The glass plates would be sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. The subject of the image is the Opera House in Andover, NY. The early-20th century block wraps around the corner in front of an older, gable-roofed house behind it. As was common, the town's opera house contained not only an auditorium for plays, concerts, and lectures, but also retail spaces on the street level. One of these is The Sugar Bowl -- the candy, ice cream and cigar store--ubiquitous at the time in Northeastern towns, and indeed, in a competing shop across the street here. A relative level of modernity for this town, located souteast of Buffalo near the Pennsylvania border, is apparent in the broad paved sidewalks and electric utility poles. The street in the foreground appears to be paved, while the side street is still dirt.