Uptown Theater

225 S. Ohio Avenue,
Sedalia, MO 65301

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Additional Info

Architects: Robert O. Boller

Firms: Boller Brothers

Styles: Art Deco

Nearby Theaters

Uptown Theatre Sedalia MO Murals

The Uptown Theatre was opened in 1936. This building appears to be completely vacant, but well cared-for. The design is a simple late Art Deco style facade with very minimal decoration at the top. The current marquee does not look right. It’s much too thin, and may have been a fixup. There’s only space for the word Uptown on the panels. The exterior ticket booth is very nice.

Renovations began in February 2016.

Contributed by Seth Gaines

Recent comments (view all 12 comments)

Allan
Allan on December 12, 2010 at 10:15 am

What a gorgeous theatre! The blue trim really makes the details of the building pop. Hope they manage to locate windows on the side or something to keep the facade intact if they convert the building into apartments.

Blackmassmovies
Blackmassmovies on January 5, 2011 at 5:18 am

We made a short video of the theatre and its surroundings:

View link

Sedalia looks very empty. In fairness, it was a Sunday and there’s a lot of rebuilding going on, so downtown was unusually quiet in November. Take your point about Google and the street number Chuck, thanks.

bob65203
bob65203 on March 20, 2012 at 4:29 pm

The building has been donated to a non profit. It has been awarded a grant for an interior design study by the National Register of Historic Places. Once completed, a fund raising campaign will ensue in order to restore the Uptown as a venue for concerts, plays, classic or non-mainstream cinema, etcetera.

ThePossum
ThePossum on October 18, 2013 at 8:11 pm

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kbHDZEsSSs

ThePossum
ThePossum on October 18, 2013 at 8:13 pm

Here’s a site w/ blueprints & photos:

http://www.uptownsedalia.com/index.html

Chris1982
Chris1982 on September 5, 2014 at 12:44 am

The owner at the time the theatre opened in 1936 was J.T. Ghosen.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on September 5, 2014 at 10:18 am

J. T. Ghosen operated an earlier theater in Sedalia called the Star, at 116 W.Second Street. It suffered a fire in 1930, as reported in the October 22 edition of The Sedalia Democrat. The article said that Ghosen operated “…several other small theatres through Central Missouri.” The Star was repaired and reopened, as it was mentioned again in a September 1, 1932, Democrat article about an event at Ghosen’s New Royal Theatre in Versailles, Missouri.

UptownTheatreSedalia
UptownTheatreSedalia on February 6, 2016 at 8:46 pm

The Uptown is currently being renovated to its 1936 glory! Please visit Uptown Theatre Sedalia on Facebook to learn more! Thanks! -Marty Lange, Uptown Theatre Project Coordinator

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on May 28, 2018 at 3:46 pm

The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists 225 Ohio Street as the address of the Electric Theatre. A photo of the rear of the building at CinemaTour shows old red brick painted over, and several windows that have been sealed up on both the first and second floors, so the building itself is quite old.

It is probably the same building the Electric occupied, though the Electric was most likely a storefront conversion occupying only part of the ground floor, and the building was probably gutted and rebuilt inside to house the Uptown, and the Streamline Modern front put on.

The Electric is never listed in the FDY, and is mentioned in the trade journals only in the 1910s, so there was probably a long gap of more than a decade between the closing of the Electric and the rebuilding of the structure for the Uptown.

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