Academy Theatre
314 Locust Street,
Sterling,
IL
61081
314 Locust Street,
Sterling,
IL
61081
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The Academy Theatre was located on the first floor of the Academy of Music building, built in the early 1880’s. The Academy Theatre opened in the mid to late-1910’s. It was a silent movie theatre until it closed in 1927.
Contributed by
Ken Roe
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
The Academy took its name from its location in the Academy of Music Building, alternately known as the Galt & Tracy Block, or the George S. Tracy Block. This was built sometime before 1884, and had an opera house on the second and third floor. The theater was definitely operating by 1916, when the map shows a one story addition at the rear of the space (this is now gone). In 1910, the space was a drugstore.
The building has been given a rather unsympathetic remodel (a Sterling specialty), and the entire thing is now a furniture store. 314 was originally the southernmost of six storefronts.
The Academy was not in the opera house space, it was in the ground floor. The opera house seems to have still been in use in 1916, possibly only for live performances.
Added a photo of the building today, and a Sanborn showing the arrangement when the theater was open.
Hate to be a contrarian but there was no Academy Theatre in Sterling’s history. Robert T. LaGrille opened the Grand Theatre in the Galt & Tracy block in 1914 at 314 Locust to show moving pictures. Final operators of the Grand were George L. Greenough and W.A. Weeks. In 1923, they built a mammoth 1,000 seat venue called the Illini Theatre launching March 1O, 1924 right across the street. (It would be renamed the Sterling Theatre in 1930 and has its own Cinema Treasure listing.) Three months later, the Grand suffered a projection fire on June 16, 1924 and did not appear to reopen. The space was used as a produce stand. In 1929 and 1930, the space was gutted and floor leveled for retail purposes.
The upper floor Academy of Music had opened on December 4, 1878 with a traveling concert by the Marie Roze-Mapleson (she the singer and he the director). The first films were shown there in 1897, the first fire caused by the films was in 1898 with a 1901 fire almost destroying the building. In the silent era, larger “road show” movies were shown in the upper floor Opera House and advertised as occurring at the Academy of Music including D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance.” Second-floor opera houses were in steep decline due to safety concerns and the lack of a need for opera houses as their profitability had waned during World War I in smaller cities and towns.
The Academy of Music’s opera house space on the second floor was converted to a Dance Hall opening December 9, 1925 effectively ending the Academy as it was created. Events at the hall were advertised as transpiring at the Academy of Music until its final event in 1931. Sears moved in in 1940. The third floor space not captured by the Dance Hall or the Sears retail store that followed apparently remains or remained into the 21st Century. The lettering of the Academy was removed by Sears and restored decades later.