Lyric Theatre

820 West Gallia Street,
Portsmouth, OH 45662

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Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on January 8, 2015 at 10:25 pm

It seems that Archiplanet conflated two theaters. There were two houses in Portsmouth called the Lyric Theatre. The first one was a building with an arched entrance, and was located in the 400 block of Chilicothe Street. This must have been the theater dating from 1912.

The newer Lyric Theatre, at 820 Gallia Street, actually opened on September 3, 1925, as Law’s Hollywood Theatre, and was designed by the local architectural firm DeVoss & Donaldson. The Hollywood Theatre is advertised in The Portsmouth Daily Times through 1926, and is mentioned in January, 1927, but the September 8, 1927, issue of the paper has a reference to the Lyric Theatre Building on Gallia Square. As the Hollywood/Lyric was on Gallia Square and the original Lyric was not, the name of the theater must have changed in 1927.

In 1928, the Schine circuit took over operation of the Lyric Theatre, along with the LaRoy and Columbia Theatres. I haven’t discovered when Warner Bros. took over the house.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on October 9, 2012 at 12:26 am

Archiplanet says that the Lyric Theatre dates from 1912, was at 820 Gallia Street, and was listed on the NRHP in 1999 but has since been removed (Presumably due to its demolition.)