Yale Theatre
208 W. Broadway,
Muskogee,
OK
74401
208 W. Broadway,
Muskogee,
OK
74401
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You may well be right, Joe, about the New Yale Theatre being renamed the Palace. On page 152 of the 1927 CHS Cheiftain Yearbook, Proctor & Marsh ran a large display ad for their “AMUSEMENT CENTERS OF MUSKOGEE”; Broadway, Orpheum, Palace, and Yale theatres, with “HIGH CLASS VAUDEVILLE /PICTURES / ROAD SHOWS". MHS yearbooks no longer ran advertisments after 1932.
An ad in the October 5, 1916, issue of the Muskogee County Democrat places the New Yale Theatre at Broadway and Third. That explains why the building at 208 Broadway looks too small to have held a 1,000-seat theater. It didn’t.
Either the New Yale Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures or its name was changed and it is listed under the later name, but is missing the AKA. I wonder if it could have become the Palace, which is listed here but without an address? The Palace was advertised as early as 1921, and I haven’t found any mentions of the New Yale later than 1919.
As early as 1919 MHS Scout Yearbooks were running display advertisements for the Yale Theatre, 208 W. Broadway, and the New Yale Theatre. Strangly enough the slogan for both houses was “Where a few go.”
L.W. Brophy opened his first Yale Theatre in Muskogee in 1908, according to this source (scroll down to section headed “pgs 118-120”) which goes on to say that he built a new Yale in 1910. It says that the second Yale seated 1000, though, and the building at 208 W. Broadway today, though it looks to date from the 1910s, doesn’t look big enough to have housed a theater that large, so I don’t know if it’s the same one or not.
Google Maps puts the pin icon for this theater about three blocks south of the actual location, on a different street. I’ve moved Street View to the correct location, the north side of Broadway a few doors west of 2nd Street.
Courtesy of ken mc, here is a 1921 newspaper ad for the Yale Theatre –
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