Category: South Tour

231 North Main Street

c. 1869 – Italianate

“The most costly and elegant building in Macomb County” proclaimed The Romeo Observer in July 1869. Financed by Hugh, Noah, and James Gray and designed by local architect Oscar S. Buel, “a young man of more than ordinary prom­ise as a designer and builder,” the Gray Opera House included three business stores, several professional offices, a ballroom and an audi­torium seating 1,200 “without crowding.” Elaborately furnished and fitted with lighting fix­tures and plate glass “imported from France,” the building played host to a number of prominent speakers and entertainers including Zachariah Chandler, U.S. Senator and leading Radical Reconstructionist; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, tireless promoter of women’s rights; Schuyler Colfax, Grant’s Vice President; the Fisk Jubilee Singers. a popular Negro university choir from Tennessee; and the ply Uncle Tom’s Cabin performed with a “full pack of spanish and Cuban blood hounds.”

Fire damaged a portion of the building in January 1876, and a second fire a month later nearly destroyed the entire complex. The Romeo Observer for 1878 noted that “Gray’s Opera House is dead property these days” and in 1885 the Gray brothers sold the place to John Smith, Jr. wealthy land owner and banker.

241 North Main Street

c. 1845 – Greek Revival

Charlton B. Newbury (1809-1865) a native of Mansfield, Connecticut settled in Romeo in 1840 at the encouragement of Nathan Dickinson and immediately joined Dickinson and E. W. Giddings in their dry goods business. In 1848 Newbury established his own firm taking Dr. Watson Loud as partner in 1852. The Newbury residence, a Greek Revival was constructed c. 1845, and has a particularly fine entrance with fluted pilasters and an interesting circle motif above the door. The portico is a later addition.