Reportedly the oldest working theatre in the United States, the Fulton Opera House, The Fulton, faces you now. This League of Regional Theatres class B regional theater sits in historic downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania and is reportedly the oldest working theatre in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
The current structure you see was built in 1852 on the foundation of Lancaster’s former jail, which dated to 1739. That jail witnessed a grim chapter in 1763, when twenty surviving members of the Conestoga were placed there for protection after fourteen Conestoga were murdered by a settler mob known as the Paxton Boys. On December 27, 1763, thirteen days after the first massacre, the Paxton Boys broke past the sheriff and others defending the jail and murdered all of the remaining Conestoga; none of the attackers were arrested.
Those events even became the subject matter for the first plays ever written on American soil: A Dialogue Between Andrew Trueman and Thomas Zealot About the Killing the Indians at Cannestogoe and Lancaster and The Paxton Boys, a Farce. In 2008 the National Park Service designated the building a site of significance to the Underground Railroad. Notice the façade's details and the streets branching from this corner where centuries of Lancaster's history converge.