The lonely-looking grandstand at the southern end of Green Lake is all that remains of the former 5500-capacity Green Lake Aqua Theater, an outdoor auditorium overlooking the lake (where the stage once was) that stood here from 1950–70.
Back in the day, the theater’s big crowd-puller was its annual summer Aqua Follies show, a kind of kitschy water ballet, but it also staged opera, jazz and, towards the end of its tenure, a couple of legendary rock performances by Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. Newer, dryer venues built for the World’s Fair in 1962 eventually put the theater out of business and it closed in 1970.
