Theatre

414 6th Street,
Charleston, IL 61920

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This theatre appears on the 1910 Sanborn, in one of the storefronts of the Johnson Block, a two-story brick structure ornamented with a turret, and constructed sometime between 1886 and 1892.

The 1902 map shows a barber in this portion, and the 1919 version shows the barber and a billiard hall back in the space. As with so many American cities, downtown Charleston has become a grim wasteland of surface parking, and nearly the entire block, once packed with two and three story commercial buildings, was a victim of this plague. A sad little park sits on the site today.

Contributed by Seth Gaines

Recent comments (view all 2 comments)

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on June 30, 2023 at 6:24 am

If the 1910 Sanborn is dated later than April then one of the unidentified theaters on it is probably the Colonial, a house whose recent opening was noted in the April 1, 1910 edition of The Nickelodeon. The Colonial might have been short-lived, as the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists only two houses at Charleston, the Aereo on S. 6th Street and the Orpheum at 54 7th Street.

SethG
SethG on June 30, 2023 at 6:37 am

The 1910 map is from February, but it is just possible that it’s the Colonial. Usually things that aren’t open have a ‘to be’ note before the description.

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