In 1878 a group of Seacoast residents, including a banker, a railroad executive, a lawyer, a housewife, and a clergyman, all members of the prominent Peirce family, joined together to rebuild Portsmouth's only venue for entertainment, which had burned to the ground the year before. “The Temple,” as the theater was called, had once been a Baptist meetinghouse and, before that, the site of the country's first almshouse, as well as a prison. The land surrounding the charred lot was owned by the family.