Warren Opera House Block and Hetherington Block

Greenfield, United States

Open to visitors

The interior is normally open, possibly ticketed.

Strollie cannot guarantee access — always check before you travel.

Find out more

These twin 2½-story brick buildings in Greenfield, Iowa, designed by Charles E. Bell and completed in 1896, exemplify Romanesque Revival commercial architecture of the period. The Warren Opera House Block, originally owned by E.E. Warren, anchors a corner site with a distinctive turret and housed both his dry goods store and a theatre; the adjacent Hetherington Block, owned by John J. Heatherington, mirrors its styling. Both structures display tripartite facades with projecting center frontispieces, broad rock-faced beltcourses above the second-floor windows, narrow metal cornices, and brick parapets topped with finials. The Opera House's parapet features a triangular pediment inscribed with "Opera House," while the Hetherington Block employs a simplified version of this detail. Listed together on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the buildings were later recognized as contributing properties to the Greenfield Public Square Historic District in 2014.