Burlington Opry
404 W. Neosho Street,
Burlington,
KS
66839
404 W. Neosho Street,
Burlington,
KS
66839
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After closing as a movie house in 1989, the Plaza Theatre later became home to live entertainment, first as the Music Box Theatre, and today as the Burlington Opry. The theater was listed to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Plaza Theater (added 2005 – Building – #05000005)
Also known as Flint Hills Opry
404 Neosho St., Burlington
Historic Significance: Event, Architecture/Engineering
Architect, builder, or engineer: Hauetter, Al
Architectural Style: Moderne
Area of Significance: Architecture, Entertainment/Recreation
Period of Significance: 1925-1949, 1950-1974
Owner: Private
Historic Function: Recreation And Culture
Historic Sub-function: Theater
Current Function: Recreation And Culture
Current Sub-function: Theater
The Plaza Theatre was remodeled and redecorated at a cost of $25,000 in 1940, as described in an illustrated article in Boxoffice Magazine of August 17 that year. The architect for the project was Larry P. Larsen.
According to the National Register of Historic Places, this theater was built in 1942 and it replaced an earlier Plaza Theater. The item in Boxoffice is probably about the previous Plaza Theater.
Link to 1940 trade article cited above by Joe Vogel: Boxoffice
The NRHP document lostmemory links to says that the Plaza Theatre replaced another house of the same name that had operated on the site for one year, but doesn’t say what happened to the earlier theater. If you compare the photo of the Music Box in the NRHP document with the 1940 photo of the Plaza in the Boxoffice article Tinseltoes linked to, the basic structure of the marquee is the same.
The Boxoffice article says that the Plaza Theatre was 25x120 feet in size, while the NRHP document says that the current Plaza is approximately 50x110 feet. It looks to me like the owners of the Plaza might have decided that they had underestimated the potential demand when they built the house in 1940, so they expanded the theater in 1942. Of course it’s also possible that some disaster befell the 1940 building, but either way it’s obvious that the 1940 marquee was retained on the 1942 Plaza.