Dear Robin,
No, not a lot of people had vaudeville houses as their
destination. A vaudeville house would've been a theatre with live
performances - comedians, singers, dancers.. Individual acts combines
into a live variety show. Vaudeville was a very popular form of
entertainment for a long time; Bob Hope started out in vaudeville,
as did a very young Sammy Davis Jr, and a lot of others. The
beginning of the musical "Gypsy" depicts a vaudeville theatre/house.

Theatres have been called "houses" for quite a long time; even today,
the "house" refers to the audience area. The lights over the
audience area are called the "house lights", and "How's the house?"
means "How much of an audience do we have tonight?" With this in
mind, vaudeville houses weren't places where someone could
reside. (Those places would be "flophouses". <g>)

Hilary Henkin
Atlanta, Georgia