Old Liberty Theater

Joe Vogel on February 23, 2016 at 4:23 pm

This item about a Ridgefield Theatre in Washington is from the June 14, 1919, issue of The Moving Picture World:

“Ridgfield Theatre Opens.

“Steve LeRouge held a grand opening for the Ridgfield Theatre, Wash., May 24. This is the fourth theatre on the LeRouge circuit and seats 300. W. A. Stone, of the Service Film Company, installed two new Motiographs in the theatre.”

I’ve come across references from the 1920s of a Steve Le Rouge who was manager of a camp at Battle Ground Lake, about 18 miles north of Vancouver, Washington, which is very near Ridgefield, so it’s probably the same Steve LeRouge who ran the theater. The Liberty’s building has a stair-step parapet, and the brick of the walls is imprecise, both of which are characteristic of buildings from the 1910s but not usually of those from 1946, so I have to wonder if perhaps Liberty was just a new name for the old theater that opened in 1919.