Lyric Theatre
Tekamah,
NE
68061
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he Crystal Theatre launched in February of 1910. The theatre appears to have been renamed the Lyric which then moved to a new location in 1916 by Empress owner M.M. Moore.
The silent venue closed in 1929 when Harry Day took on the venue launching it as the “New” Lyric Theatre on September 24, 1929 with Ruth Chatterton in “Madame X.” It was the wiring of the previous Lyric for sound.
The January 8, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World mentioned an Empress Theatre that had recently reopened in Tekamah, operated by Frank Welch. As the Lyric was in operation that year, this must have been a different theater.
The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists the Shafer Theater at Tekamah, a ground-floor house with 400 seats on the main floor and 250 in the balcony (the total capacity was about half the population of Tekamah.) This house was too large to have been the Lyric, but it might have become the Empress.
The October 5, 1930, issue of Motion Picture News said that Harry Day had opened the New Lyric Theatre in Tekamah, Nebraska on September 24. The new house had cost $32,000.
The Nebraska State Historical Society has a ledger from the Lyric Theatre in Tekamah, covering the years 1915 to 1919. Presumably, the New Lyric was a replacement for the earlier theater, or perhaps an extensive rebuilding of the original theater.