Wareham Hall
410 Poyntz Avenue,
Manhattan,
KS
66502
410 Poyntz Avenue,
Manhattan,
KS
66502
2 people
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Related Websites
Wareham Hall (Official)
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Commonwealth Amusement Corp., Dickinson Theatres, H.J. Griffith Theaters Inc.
Architects: Carl Boller
Firms: Boller Brothers
Previous Names: Wareham Theatre
Nearby Theaters
The Opera House opened around 1881. Moore’s Opera House opened on August 17, 1893. Movies were screened from 1911 when it operated as the Wareham Electric Theatre. It was demolished.
By 1923 the Wareham Theatre had opened on the site. By the late-1940’s it was taken over by Commonwealth Amusement, followed by Dickinson Theatres. It closed as a movie theatre in 1986.
It later became a dinner theatre which had closed around 2020. The building next door but one with the balconies is the Wareham Hotel which closed and was converted into apartments in the 1980’s.
Beautiful refinished oak doors and, (it has to be) the original snack bar with its porcelain front. Seats are gone and were replaced with tables, for dinner. New owners took over in 2022 and hopes are to renovate and reopen as a live theatre named Wareham Hall.
Contributed by
Joel Weide
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Recent comments (view all 28 comments)
Tinseltoes: The Carlton is not yet listed. CinemaTour gives the address of the Carlton Theatre as 300 S. 4th Street. It is probably the same building that now houses Ady’s Appliance, 302 S. 4th (southwest corner of Pierre Street), though architect Louis Siebers' streamline modern facade has been given a boxy modernization
I just learned of this theatre in Manhattan, Kansas known as “the little Apple”. Very nice.
I found a couple photos of the Wareham Theater I had taken years ago. Uploaded both of them (one twice somehow, sorry). One of the concession stand and the other of the screen area (now removed). They both look much smaller than I remember from working there in the 1970’s.
The Oct. 27, 1951 issue of Boxoffice had a two-page story, with pictures, of the Wareham and how it rebounded from terrible flood damage in July that year.
The Moore’s Opera House Opened On August 17th, 1893. The Theater Reopened As The Wareham Theatre On September 15, 1938.
This house appears to have operated as a movie theater as early as 1914, when the American Motion Picture Directory listed the “Electric Theatre, 410 Pointz Ave.”
The history is wrong.
Moore’s Opera House was built around 1882, and is shown on the 1885 map. I’m not at all sure that it has anything to do with the Wareham, except that it occupied the lot. There is some confusing information out there. Wareham purchased the building in 1893. The 1905 map shows it as the Wareham Opera House, and it is listed as such in that year’s Cahn guide.
The KS historical society says the theater was built in 1909, the date at the top of the building is 1910, but the 1912 map still shows the opera house in its old configuration. The 1923 map, which shows the new theater, has it 12 feet taller than the old building, and much deeper. I doubt there was any of the old structure retained at all. That map calls it the Wareham Theatre, so the 1938 renaming date is definitely bogus.
I suspect the Electric name was only used briefly. The theater was likely showing films earlier than 1914, since the airdome to the west, which was most likely associated with this theater, was open by 1912.
I also see no evidence that the old opera house included a hotel. This is definitely something that would have shown up on a fire insurance map. There is no hotel shown anywhere on this block on any map, until the construction of the Hotel Wareham in 1926.
Quite a few theaters in the 1926 FDY are listed as Opera House or “(Name) Op H.” but the Wareham is not among them. It was surely the Wareham Theatre by then.
Currently, the theater is closed for rentals, and the dinner theater format appears to have been abandoned some time ago. In 2022 the building was purchased by a non-profit organization that hopes to renovate and return the building to full theatrical use as a regional performing arts facility. The group, which has already received state funding for feasibility studies, calls itself, and apparently the building as well, Wareham Hall. Here is their official web site.
The web site has a history of the building which unfortunately includes nothing about the rebuilding (or extensive alterations) that must have taken place in the 1910s. A page for Wareham Hall at the Downtown Manhattan web site says: “In 1893 Harry P, Wareham purchased the building, installed electricity and renamed it The Wareham Opera House. In 1910, the structure was enlarged and remodeled with the current facade. In 1911 a screen was installed in front of the stage and the Wareham became the second theater in Kansas to show movies [a dubious claim]. The Wareham remained one of Manhattan’s main movie theaters until 1986.”
Again, the opening date for the opera house, which is not the same building anyway, is wrong. The opera house was at least 11 years old in 1893, when it was purchased by Wareham. The 1897 map still calls it Moore’s Opera House.
As I said before, since the new building is so much larger than the opera house, it wouldn’t be possible for any of it to remain, except possibly parts of the side walls or some of the foundation.