The Auditorium Theater opened in November, 1890. The building still stands on Broad Street just north of the Public Square. It is in poor condition, but many hope that repairs and restoration will be accomplished in the near future.

As a boy Carl Sandburg was attracted by the operations of the theater as well as the famous thespians who came to entertain. The railroad connections to Galesburg made the city and its theaters a convenient place to visit. Many actors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made appearances on the stages of Galesburg.

Joseph Jefferson was a member of the fourth generation of a family of actors. He was also the fourth to bear his name. As an infant, Joe Jefferson made his first appearance on the stage. He was fascinated with the idea of producing sorrow and joy in an audience through the character he was playing.

In the summer of 1859, Jefferson was on vacation in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He happened to be reading a book by Washington Irving, the creator of the Rip Van Winkle story. Jefferson began to think about the character of Rip Van Winkle and how it could be performed on the stage. First, he created the costume to be worn by the character. Then, he secured copies of three older versions of the story as well as several dramas which had been written previously.

He chose to make Rip Van Winkle the only character on the stage. The demons in the story glided across the stage without speaking, which added to the weirdness of the scenes.

By the end of the summer Jefferson was ready to present his play to the public. He continued to play Rip Van Winkle for the next forty years. The public loved Rip Van Winkle and attended performances multiple times.

When Joe Jefferson came to Galesburg with his play, Carl Sandburg and his friends went to see it. Afterward, they liked to repeat Rip’s toast in dialect: “May you lif long and brosper.”

Sandburg didn’t always have the quarter to gain admission to the Auditorium. He helped change scenery, hand out bills advertising the featured play or participate in crowd scenes in exchange for a dime or a seat in the balcony. Sometimes the best he could do was to be at the railroad depot to watch the celebrities arrive or depart on the train.