Earle Theater

Main Street and E. 9th Street,
Rochester, IN 46975

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SethG
SethG on December 15, 2025 at 1:36 pm

So the address was a bit wrong, because the Odd Fellows was at W 9th and Main. The correct address was either 828 or 830 Main. Since they say corner room, I assume that means 830. The building was a three story brick building, built sometime before 1885. It had a repulsive 1960s slipcover, and was torn down sometime around 2015. There’s now a sad little park there. The building definitely did not ‘burn down’. That seems to be a common exaggeration for older theaters.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on December 15, 2025 at 11:59 am

This item is from a compendium of excerpts from newspaper articles about various Fulton County towns:

“In the corner room of the Odd Fellows Building, Fred Wilson operated a hardware store and the location later housed the Earle Theatre, one of Rochester’s earliest movie houses where you could see a ‘feature’ for a five-cent piece. The Earle Theatre brought Rochester its first mechanical talking pictures. Adjoining the theatre, Al Fristoe operated Rochester’s earliest ‘five and 10 cent’ store in what is now the north half of the Kroger market. [Earle A. Miller, The News-Sentinel, Monday, July 14, 1958]”
The 1907 (April) and 1913 Sanborn maps identify the building on northwest corner of 9th and Main as the location of the IOOF lodge, so we do have have the right location for the theater. It is clear that the building did not burn down, so obviously the theater simply got burned out.

SethG
SethG on May 25, 2020 at 10:25 am

I don’t think the location is accurate. Comparing the 1907 and 1913 maps, the block of E 9th across from the courthouse looks nearly identical. Nothing is missing, one shed has been expanded. The other side of the intersection is the same.