Salt Lake City Opera House

I was greatly astonished to find in the desert heart of the continent a place of public amusement which for capacity, beauty, and comfort has no superier in America, except the Opera Houses of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. It is internally constructed somewhat like the first of these, seats twenty-five hundred people, and commodiously receives five hundred more, when, as in the present instance, the stage is thrown into the parquet, and the latter boarded up to the level of the former for dancing. Externally the building is a plain,but not ungraceful structure, of stone, brick and stucco. My greatest surprise was the really exquisite beauty of the gilt and painted decorations of the great arch over the stage, the cornices, and the moulding about the proscenium-boxes. President Young, with a proper pride, assured my that every particle of the ornamental work was by indigenous and saintly hands.