Clarke Theatre

rivest266 on January 8, 2017 at 8:18 pm

This reopened as Strand on July 31st, 1917. Grand opening ad in the photo section.

Joe Vogel on October 5, 2012 at 12:52 am

The Clarke Theatre appears to have been new construction in 1936, though it’s possible that the side walls were common walls shared with the adjacent buildings (often the case in old business districts of small towns) and thus would have belonged to both the Bijou and the Clarke. Everything else was probably new, though. Here’s an item from the May 2, 1936, issue of The Film Daily:

“St. Louis — Bids will be taken May 8 by the Mattoon Theater Co., Mattoon, Ill., for the 800-seat theater to be built there, and on May 15 bids will be taken for the house to be erected by Lyric Theater Co., Salem, Mo. Bruce F. Barnes, St. Louis architect, figured in the plans for both houses.”

A timeline of Mattoon’s theaters on this web page says that the second Bijou Theatre opened in 1910. The first Bijou operated from 1905 to 1908. I’ve been unable to discover if the first and second Bijous were on the same or different sites.