Colonial Theatre
131 West Street,
Rutland,
VT
05736
131 West Street,
Rutland,
VT
05736
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I saw this theatre on a recent cycling trip and it took a while for me to figure out this was a theatre. It’s also known as the Clement Building and there was a restaurant at the bottom right, empty retail on the other side and offices upstairs. It looked more like a bank building but it was huge and nice.
When you went to the back of the building for a full view, it looked kind of off. The front of the building on the street corner was a grey brick with two pilasters on either side of the floors of windows (six). The side from the back view was red brick, the hallway to the auditorium a lower gray, cinder block and the auditorium was an ugly white and fading horizontal siding.
It looked more industrial than anything and reminded me of the Palace Theatre in Netcong, NJ. But it was intact from the outside. Just three different elemental views.
Contributed by
Dave Bonan
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
The Colonial opened in 1925 but I couldn’t find anything on a closing date.
It might have been a short lived silent movie theate.
Here’s a puzzle for someone to work on:
This web page at CinemaData has some very limited information about the Colonial Theatre in a description of an undated postcard. The Colonial Theatre was next door to a theater called the Grand (“The Grand on left, one-story, brick with arched doorway, advertising clearly visible. On right, three-story commercial block with vertical sign ‘Colonial’ with two one-sheets out front.”)
A 1911 postcard for sale on e-Bay (here, while it lasts) shows a building that is still standing now, though somewhat altered, on the south side of West Street between Merchant’s Row (aka Grove Street) and Church Street. The problem is that this building has an even-numbered address. One side of it is currently occupied by a Japanese restaurant called Tokyo House, at 106 West Street #2.
The three-story building next to the Grand, where the Colonial was in the vintage postcard described on the CinemaData page, doesn’t match the description of the building Dave Bonan saw, nor would it have the address 131 West Street. As of 1911 there was no evidence of a theater in it. Today, it is occupied by an outfit called Pyramid Holistic Wellness Center, 116 West Street.
Were there perhaps two different houses called the Colonial Theatre in Rutland? If so, then the one at 131 West Street is missing from the CinemaData list for Rutland, which can be seen on this web page (I had to scroll across on this one- I don’t know if it’s a browser issue or not.) It’s also possible that Dave Bonan misidentified the Clement Building (northeast corner of West Street and Merchant’s Row) as the site of a former theater. It doesn’t look like one to me.
The Colonial Theatre was in operation prior to 1916, and was the subject of this article in the January 19 issue of the Rutland Herald that year.