Recently Jim and I visited the Monticello Opera house while travelling in the pan handle areas of Florida.  The exact address for those wishing to find it on a map is 185 W Washington Street, Monticello, Florida, 32345.When we visited there was no show currently being performed, however we were fortunate enough to find someone there who was extremely nice and provided us with a short tour.  All the pictures of the inside of this opera house were taken without any additional light (no flash, no tripod).
 

The outside of this building says "Perkins Block" and has the year 1890 engraved on it.  Based on information from the Monticello Opera House website, John H. Perkins was the businessman whom this building is named after. Here's the north side of this building showing the engravings on the building.
 

The main entrance to the opera house has several wooden doors with stained glass and hand carved wood designs.
 

As I view the inside of the old opera house I decide to take a chance and see what the Nikon D7100 camera can do in low light (for those of you that are interested).  Several of these photos were taken with an ISO of 6400 (a first for me - they were a bit noisy, but I worked to clean them up some in post-processing). 
 

The old wooden stairway to the opera house is immediately inside the wood doors shown up above. We climbed up the stairs to view the opera seating and stage.
 

As we walked into the main portion of the opera house, we are standing at the back of the opera house and looking towards the stage.
 

We are standing near the stage and looking towards the right side of the opera house.  These are not the original seats, however they do have one of the original seats in the lobby area for those wishing to see what they looked like.
 

The light fixture on the ceiling is quite old and drew my attention.  Here's a closer look at it.
 

Lots of attention to detail on the lighting fixture when looking closely.  As we learn about some of the history related to this opera house, I asked the obvious question, "Is it haunted?".  After all, anything this old (now over 100 years old) has some history behind it and one would think that it might have a few old timers hanging around!  The response provided is that it is stated to be haunted and they always keep the opera house 'closed' one night each week to ensure that the ghosts have a night to themselves should they wish to partake.  Monticello does have ghost tours for those that are interested.
 

This is the left side of the opera house (the stage is behind us).  There are three sections of seats for patrons as well as a balcony.  I view exactly how one gets out of here just in case strange things start to happen, but nothing was amiss.  For those curious, yes, Jimbo took the tour with us and as long as he stayed calm, I figured we have nothing to fear....but we did not stay after dark.
 

Until next time,
 

Linda Perdue, VP Shoots Photography