1890 Theater & Home of the Lavender Lady
514 56th Street, Kenosha, WI 53140
Age
All Ages (varies by performance)
Cost
$$
Performance tickets typically $15-30; check venue site for show schedule.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic downtown theater with main floor seating
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1927 · Community Theater · Movie Palace Era · Kenosha Performing Arts · Lakeside Players
Peter Rhode, a German immigrant who owned and operated a hotel in Kenosha, purchased a downtown lot in 1890 and constructed a one-thousand-seat opera house. The Rhode Opera House was an unusually ambitious venue for a city of Kenosha's size at the time, and it briefly served as the principal performing arts venue on Wisconsin's southeastern lakeshore.
In 1896, the theater burned to the ground. Rhode rebuilt it on the same site, and the second Rhode Opera House operated until 1927, when new owners — the Saxe Amusement Company — demolished the building and constructed the Gateway Theater in its place. The Gateway, built for the still-novel medium of moving pictures, served Kenosha as a movie palace for several decades.
In 1988, the Lakeside Players, a nonprofit community theater group, purchased the building. The organization restored the venue, rebranded it as the Rhode Center for the Arts in tribute to Peter Rhode's original opera house, and now operates two performance spaces — the Donna Wolf-Steigerwaldt Auditorium and Skinner Hall — along with two art galleries.
The building remains downtown Kenosha's primary venue for community theater, music, and visual art exhibitions.
Sources
Among Kenosha's documented theatrical hauntings, the Rhode Center is the most consistently described. The principal entity is known as the Lavender Lady, an apparition associated with the women's dressing rooms and powder rooms backstage.
Reports gathered by Milwaukee Magazine and regional theater interviews describe an antique piano in storage that is occasionally heard playing without explanation, and a pleasant floral scent — described variously as lavender or general flowers — that drifts through dressing rooms with no detectable source. Cast and crew members have reported glimpses of a woman's face in dressing-room mirrors and at the edge of corridors. Most witnesses describe the presence as benevolent.
Secondary phenomena include moving props and stage decorations during productions, and disembodied voices heard from empty seating areas during rehearsals. A separate, less-defined entity is reported in the basement; staff have described that presence as unsettling rather than malevolent, and have not assigned it a name.
The Rhode Center does not formally operate as a paranormal venue, but its history has been featured in regional reporting on Wisconsin's haunted theaters.
Notable Entities
Attend a Lakeside Players production or visiting performance in either the Donna Wolf-Steigerwaldt Auditorium or Skinner Hall. The 1927 Saxe-built theater incorporates the footprint of Peter Rhode's original 1890 opera house and is reportedly home to the Lavender Lady, an apparition associated with backstage dressing rooms.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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