Abby Theatre

North Main Street,
Abingdon, IL 61410

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Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on December 3, 2016 at 7:37 pm

I’ve found the Abby Theatre mentioned in the Galesburg Register-Mail as early as 1953, but the newspaper archive is incomplete so it might have been operating long before that. The house appears to have closed and reopened several times over the years. Here is a brief item from the Abingdon news section of the Register-Mail of October 22, 1963:

“Commended were efforts of Abingdon Chamber of Commerce for reopening Abbey Theater and Robert Edmiston stated Mr. Purtle, owner, today, was scheduled to be in Abingdon for conference with a party interested in its operation.”
Ads from 1972 and 1974 tout live music shows at the Abby on Saturday nights, but don’t say anything about movies being shown on any other nights. Its career as a movie house might have been over by then.