Silver Theatre

I know I’d sure love to see it, DAK. I’m guessing a good number of other folks would too!

I think whenever anyone has any sort of relic from a theatre, detailed photos or scans should ALWAYS be uploaded. I see CT as sort of a virtual museum/archive and it’s so important everyone contribute everything they can. It would be fabulous if one day, every theatre that ever existed had a listing here and every known fact and personal memory was recorded in the comments or description,every existing photo uploaded to the photos section and every surviving document/relic scanned/photographed in detail and then uploaded to photos. I think quite a few people think that the photo section is simply for photos of the building itself and that’s absolutely not the case. I just posted scans of a ticket (front and back) I own for the Silver. It’s really sad how many theatres have rapidly faded away into nothing but foggy memories. I’ve run across more locations than I can count where not even the local museum was aware it ever existed and the only known vestige of its life is a painfully vague listing in Film Daily Yearbook. I always wonder if somewhere there is a photograph in a family album, a stack of show calendars buried in some grandma’s basement or even some lonely, elderly person who once owned/managed/worked at/patronized any given theatre with vivid memories of the theatre in question; this elder may be the last (or one of the last) living ties to the place and growing dangerously closer to death each day-not only of them as a person but of their unique and priceless memories as well should they go unrecorded (which is all too often the case). I’d even bet that in many cases (particularly in small, isolated communities), the theatres themselves may still stand but for nobody to recognize as their theatrical days ended too long ago for any living person to recal and no existing record of its former function. Our theatres and drive-ins are just too important to our history for us to allow them to vanish. These venues were so much to the communities they served. It will take all of us to bring whatever shred of the past we may have or know of to the table here to ensure this not happen.

The announcement that the formal opening of the Silver Theatre had been held Wednesday and Thursday nights was made in Boxoffice of August 31, 1935. The building had been “reconstructed,” Boxoffice said, and “…replaces the old Silver Theatre, a landmark here for years.”

Despite the impression given by that item, Bennett & Straight’s version of the Silver Theatre was not entirely new construction, but a radical remodeling of the building that had been Bert Silver’s second theater in Greenville. A more extensive article about Mr. Silver and his theater appeared in Boxoffice of March 7, 1936. It includes not only photos, but before-and-after floor plans showing how extensive the alterations had been.

The article mentions that the Silver Theatre had earlier been Phelps' Opera House. An 1896 book called Headlight flashes along the Detroit, Lansing & Northern line says of this establishment (a converted livery stable, according to Boxoffice) “the commodious Phelps' opera house of twelve hundred seating capacity is well patronized.” The following page has an interior photo. I don’t think the rebuilt Silver was quite so capacious, but it was indeed large, as evidenced by the interior photos in Boxoffice.

Water Winter Wonderland has a page for the Silver Theatre with photos. It gives a closing date of 1986.