The Napoleon Curtain and the Brown Grand Theatre Ghost

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 21, 2026 · How we verify

Concordia’s opera house was built to impress, and it still does. The Brown Grand Theatre ghost story is a small, quiet thing beside the building itself: a line of house lore holding that Earl Van Dom Brown, the young man who supervised the construction and unveiled its famous curtain, never quite left. The theatre stands in north central Kansas, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and has been called “the most elegant theater between Kansas City and Denver.” What follows separates what the record shows from what the theatre says about its own resident spirit.

Quick Orientation

Where: Concordia, Kansas. Built: ground broken 3 April 1906, opened 17 September 1907. Cost: $40,000. Architect: Carl Boller of Kansas City. Current use: tourist attraction and performing arts and community centre, seating 650 after restoration. The reported presence: Earl Brown, according to theatre lore.

Colonel N. B. Brown’s Plan for an Opera House

In November 1905, Concordia resident Colonel Napoleon Bonaparte Brown told the townspeople he intended to build a fully outfitted opera house for the town. He hired Carl Boller, the renowned Kansas City theatre architect, to prepare the design drawings and blueprints. Construction fell to Brown’s son, Earl Van Dom Brown, who toured more than thirty opera houses in Kansas and Missouri gathering ideas before work began. Native Concordian W. T. Short, already known locally for the Brown family home Brownstone Hall and other buildings in the area, was hired as construction supervisor. Ground was broken on 3 April 1906.

Opening Night, 17 September 1907

The finished building stood sixty feet high and ran one hundred and twenty feet in length, Renaissance in style and costing $40,000. The formal opening took place on 17 September 1907 with a production of The Vanderbilt Cup, a comedy set against the backdrop of the auto racing trophy of the same name. One attendee, Carl “Punch” Rogers, later recalled that the firemen at the doors were in full uniform and the ushers wore white gloves, and that “that night society sort of quivered.”

Two Deaths in 1910 and the Lore of Earl Brown

The theatre prospered for four years. Then N. B. Brown died in 1910, and four months later his popular son Earl died as well. That double loss is the whole root of the ghost story. According to theatre lore, Earl’s ghost haunts the building, and is said to be most active during the opening season.

It is worth being plain about the status of this. The source material records the claim as lore, not as a documented pattern of witness accounts. There is no catalogue of dates, no roster of named witnesses, no described apparition. What exists is a well-loved local tradition attached to a young man who died shortly after completing the most ambitious project of his short life, in the building he helped raise. Many theatre ghosts have a shape like this: the loss is real, the haunting is the story a community tells about the loss.

Napoleon at Austerlitz Above the Stage

On opening night in 1907, Earl Brown unveiled a drop curtain reproducing a Horace Vernet painting, titled Napoleon at Austerlitz. It was a gift to his father in recognition of the Colonel’s contribution to the community and to the theatre, his crowning achievement.

The original still hangs above the stage. It saw little use during the theatre’s decades as a cinema, and a tornado in 1967 caused extensive water damage to the roof over the stage, permanently staining and streaking the already faded and brittle painting. Marion Cook, then a member of the Brown Grand Board of Directors, donated a replacement. It was painted by the Twin City Scenic Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the same firm responsible for the original. Robert Braun painted the Napoleon battle scene and Michael Russell, the company president, came out of retirement to paint the bordering green draperies and the gold and bronze frame. The two artists worked from a colour photograph of Vernet’s Battle of Wagram, which hangs in the Hall of Battles at the Palace of Versailles.

From Silent Pictures to the 1980 Restoration

The theatre operated under various management until 1925, when it was sold to the Concordia Amusement Company. From 1925 to 1974 it showed silent pictures and then talkies, remodelled several times with air conditioning and concessions to keep pace. The last film screened there was the world premiere of The Devil and LeRoy Bassett, written and directed by Robert E. Pearson, a Concordia native.

Grassroots community effort then took over. Restoration was completed in 1980, returning the theatre to its 1907 appearance with 650 seats, replacement seating, restored walls and artistic work, an updated lighting system and air conditioning. On 17 September 2007 the Brown Grand marked its hundredth birthday with community events spread over several days, coinciding with the opening of the National Orphan Train Museum, also in Concordia.

Seeing the Brown Grand for Yourself

The Brown Grand is not a ghost attraction and does not present itself as one. It is a working performing arts and community centre for Concordia and north central Kansas, and it still hosts many popular regional events. The straightforward way in is to buy a ticket to something, sit under the Napoleon curtain, and take the building on its own terms. Visitors who want the ghost angle should temper expectations: the story is a single line of house tradition about a young man who died in 1910, and the theatre’s real distinction is that it survived at all.

Address: Concordia, Kansas

See Brown Grand Theatre for Yourself

Sources

• NPGallery Asset Detail (National Park Service)
• Đồng Hồ Nữ Chính Hãng Cao Cấp, Giá Tốt Tại Donghodep
• media.www.tbirdtimes.com
• Wikipedia: Brown Grand Theatre

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