I attended the Aladdin Theater for every change of the program (3 times a week) when I was about 4 to 7 years of age (1940 to 1943) and almost every weekend thereafter, until I was in high school and college some distance away. I lived at 1302 Fremont about 3 blocks north and east, at that age. The theater was actually at 6038 E. 15th St. in the 1940 tax rolls, its address today. I have been looking for any photos of that wonderful theater in those days (with the marquee and ticket booth) of my youth for many, many years, and have never been able to find anything! Recently photos of every KC neighborhood taken in 1940, for the tax rolls, were made available when the file was given to the Kansas City Library Special Collections, and I asked Jeremy Drouhin of that department and he provided me with a thumbnail photo file of every address on 15th street from White to Belmont, and the photo of the Aladdin Theater WAS MISSING! My bad luck continues. It would not have been a very dramatic photo, but the marquee and ticket booth would have been there!
The shop front to the east (right) was a sweet shop connected to the theater, and the corner shop was a drug store, with the diagonal entrance.
The photos shown here are very good quality of the great old Spanish/Moorish architecture with the venerable tiles, etc! I will continue to search for any photos of that era, and I’ll post the request for any of those here on this site, in the hopes that SOMEDAY, someone might have some early photos that would provide me with a nostalgia trip. And, of course, if I were to find anything, I would love to post the photos here.
If this is too verbose or personal or otherwise too off-topic the moderator may feel free to delete it!
I attended the Aladdin Theater for every change of the program (3 times a week) when I was about 4 to 7 years of age (1940 to 1943) and almost every weekend thereafter, until I was in high school and college some distance away. I lived at 1302 Fremont about 3 blocks north and east, at that age. The theater was actually at 6038 E. 15th St. in the 1940 tax rolls, its address today. I have been looking for any photos of that wonderful theater in those days (with the marquee and ticket booth) of my youth for many, many years, and have never been able to find anything! Recently photos of every KC neighborhood taken in 1940, for the tax rolls, were made available when the file was given to the Kansas City Library Special Collections, and I asked Jeremy Drouhin of that department and he provided me with a thumbnail photo file of every address on 15th street from White to Belmont, and the photo of the Aladdin Theater WAS MISSING! My bad luck continues. It would not have been a very dramatic photo, but the marquee and ticket booth would have been there!
The shop front to the east (right) was a sweet shop connected to the theater, and the corner shop was a drug store, with the diagonal entrance.
The photos shown here are very good quality of the great old Spanish/Moorish architecture with the venerable tiles, etc! I will continue to search for any photos of that era, and I’ll post the request for any of those here on this site, in the hopes that SOMEDAY, someone might have some early photos that would provide me with a nostalgia trip. And, of course, if I were to find anything, I would love to post the photos here.
If this is too verbose or personal or otherwise too off-topic the moderator may feel free to delete it!