The Valentine Theatre opened on Christmas Eve, 1895, which seems fitting for a building that was something of a gift to Toledo. Named by wealthy sportsman George Ketcham for his father Valentine, the city's first millionaire, it was designed by local architect E.O. Fallis with a nod to Chicago's Louis Sullivan: flat brick planes, restrained ornament, and one of the earliest cantilevered balconies in the country.

The theatre's story doesn't stay tidy. During Prohibition its basement hid speakeasies and gambling rooms, with false doors that people still talk about today. By the mid-twentieth century it had done stints as City Hall and a motor hotel. A meticulous 1990s renovation restored its Victorian grandeur, and the lobby mural now records the names of performers who once graced its stage: Houdini, Caruso, Sarah Bernhardt, Al Jolson.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Valentine as a lens on Toledo's wilder decades, tracing the mobster Peter Licavoli's shadow across downtown and connecting the theatre's glamorous facade to the gambling dens and gang violence that flourished just behind it.