Rice Theater

Joe Vogel on August 8, 2023 at 6:17 pm

I believe the photos currently displayed on the Colonial Theatre’s photo page actually depict the Rice Theatre. An item in Boxoffice of September 4, 1948 is captioned “Shinnston, W. Va., Theatre Built by George Rice” describes a building that doesn’t match any other house in Shinnston. The auditorium was on the upper floor, and the ground floor, completed a year earlier, was occupied by a grocery store. The theater, delayed by shortages of manpower and materials, was to be completed soon.

Comments on a photo of the Rice on this Flickr page say that in the 1980s the lower floor was occupied by a Dollar General store, but nobody seemed to remember the theater. CinemaTour lists the years of operation as 1948-1957, which is probably right.