What is the connection with the Wurzburg and Powers families?
Hint: It has to do with Powers’ Opera House, Regent Theatre and music…
The Powers’ and Wurzburg families were life-long friends. About the time of the Civil War William T. Powers builds a brick Italianate with cupola just west of his factories on the west side canal on the southwest corner of Summer Avenue and Allen Street. Sometime after William T. Powers moves his family into the upper floors of the opera house on Pearl Street circa 1874, Frederick W. Wurzburg family moves into the house on Summer and Allen.
F. W. Wurzburg 1880-90s on the northeast corner of Canal Ave. (lower Monroe Ave.) and Crescent St.
Frederick Adolphus (F. A.) Wurzburg, son of Frederick William (F. W.) Wurzburg who opened the first store in 1872, was music director at Powers’ Opera House for 9 years during the 1880s. Then a William M. Wurzburg is music director and conducts the Regent Theatre Orchestra in the 1920s. William M. Wurzburg’s daughter, Irene, will share the big screen in September 1915 with him and cast of Grand Rapidians as they perform in Blissvelt Romance, the first local film shot in Grand Rapids August 1915. But it does not end there, Donald Belknap Wurzburg, Frederick A.’s son, will marry actress, Helen Wallace of New York, who has joined William H. Wright’s, Wright Players at Powers’ Theatre in the 1932–33 season.
more to come…
