On January 6, 1856, construction of the Pacific Stables building on the west side of Second Street between K and L was finished at a cost of $20,000. W.B. Carr and Company were the owners and financers of the building, however, by 1857 the building was under the ownership of H.R. Covey and Company. The building was 42 by 100 feet and two stories tall, in addition to a basement. The first floor was fitted with offices, harness rooms, and 32 stalls for horses. The second story had a large hall and a section of it was used as an armory. The Sutter Rifles, formed in 1852 and named after John Sutter, had their headquarters on the second floor in the late 1850s.
The floods of 1861-1862 badly damaged the building and the unprofessional raising of the building in 1866 to the new street level left the building very structurally weak. It did not help that the armory, that was housed on the second floor for many years, caused the floor to sag. Then owner Frank S. Malone tried to solve the building’s structural problem by anchoring the south wall of the building to the Hotel de France next door (formerly known as the Clarendon House).
In 1876, the second floor was renovated into an opera house, with seating for one thousand people, and was managed by George F. Moore. On opening night on November 18, 1876, the show had barely begun when the second floor collapsed. Seven people, including two printers for the Sacramento Daily-Record Union newspaper, were killed and over 200 were injured when the audience fell through to the stables on the floor below. Somehow, no horses were killed when the floor collapsed from above, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
In this video, Aly discusses the history of the Pacific Stables while standing outside a reconstruction of the Pacific Stables resides at its original location in Old Sacramento.
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