Iowa Theater
416 Main Street,
Keokuk,
IA
52632
416 Main Street,
Keokuk,
IA
52632
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The Hippodrome was a $20,000 venue built of stone in downtown Keokuk in 1912. It launched with motion pictures and vaudeville on August 29, 1912.
1939 photo added courtesy of the AmeriCar The Beautiful Facebook page.
The fire occurred in the early hours of May 12, 1975, destroying neighboring buildings as well as the theater. Here is a newspaper front page with a wire service story (site may try to sell you a subscription).
Here is news of the Hippodrome from the July 22, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World:
In 1917, The Hippodrome was bucking the trend to higher admission prices in movie theaters, according to the March 3 issue of MPW: The earliest mention of the Hippodrome I’ve found is from The New York Clipper of December 6, 1913. The earliest reference to the Regent I’ve found is an appearance by the Denishawn Dance Company on February 28, 1924, but the name was most likely adopted immmediately following the 1922 remodeling.This house was still called the Hippodrome as late as 1922, when the June issue of Stone & Webster Journal said that the Baker-Dodge Theatre Company was remodeling its Hippodrome Theatre in Keokuk at a cost of $20,000. It might have been at the time of this remodeling that the house was renamed.
Some of the oral histories on keokuk.com state that the Iowa theater burned to the ground. I didn’t post the link here as you have to sift through a great deal of nostalgia to find the references to the Iowa.