Fountain Square Theatre
1105 Shelby Street,
Indianapolis,
IN
46203
1105 Shelby Street,
Indianapolis,
IN
46203
2 people
favorited this theater
This theatre was opened on May 6, 1928 as a vaudeville and movie house seating 1,800. By the late-1950’s, the Fountain Square Theatre was closed and then gutted.
The theatre was converted first into a Woolworth’s store then a thrift shop before its restoration and is now used for banquets and swing dancing.
“My father often went there when he was growing up in the late-1930’s to 1940 when he joined the Army and became a soldier in World War II. He returned there in the late-1940’s, and there was a popular soda-pop malt shop built next door to the theatre in the same building. He said he had a lot of fond memories there, including seeing the Hoosier Hot Shots Band perform live onstage there in 1939.”
Contributed by
Donald John Long, Cinema Treasures
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Recent comments (view all 9 comments)
The Fountain Square Theater is stillstanding and is used often for swing dances and weddings. The adjacant soda shop and 1920 duckpin lanes are all restored. AS reported above, the theater was used as a shopping/ thrift store, but has since been reclaimed.
The Fountain Square Theatre still stands. The website is: http://www.fountainsquareindy.com/theatre.html
The address for the Fountain Square Theatre, is 1105 Shelby St., Indianapolis, In.
Here is a photo of the Fountain Square Theater.
This is a close-up photo of the Fountain Square Theater.
Here are some photos from the late 40s or early 50s. The last photo shows a different theater, the Granada, in the same vicinity as the Fountain Square. If the Granada is listed under a different name, please let me know the listing:
http://tinyurl.com/puddq
http://tinyurl.com/nnf77
http://tinyurl.com/n57dr
http://tinyurl.com/mgb8z
http://tinyurl.com/pm6k2
http://tinyurl.com/s3ehd
Interior photos of the banquet hall can be seen here.
This is the Fountain Square Theater in 2004.
Contrary to what was said above – it looks like the auditorium was not gutted in the 1950s. The current banquet hall shows a nicely renovated atmospheric auditorium with balcony and priscenium arch. Still have clouds painted on the ceiling. Their history article makes no mention about conversion to a Woolworth’s – they merely mention it going into decline in the 1960s. They renovated it into a banquet hall starting in 1993.