Mancos Opera House
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Veterans of Foreign Wars Post (Mancos Opera House)
1910, A. J. Ames and George D. Woods. 136 W. Grand Ave (northeast corner of Mesa St.) (NR)
Despite a three-story facade of brick with sandstone trim, this is actually a two-story building with the high-ceilinged VFW hall on the first floor. Upstairs, the town's largest commercial building housed the Checkerboard Ballroom, so called for the numbered squares painted on the floor. When the music—provided by local bands such as the Slumber Wreckers—stopped, a number was called and a prize awarded to whomever stood on that numbered square. The hall, which holds 300, has served for basketball games and high school graduations, as well as for live performances and movies. The relatively modest trim, corbeling, and stepped corner parapets typify twentieth-century restraint rather than nineteenth-century exuberance.
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