Temple Grand Theatre
108 N. Oak Street,
Creston,
IA
50801
108 N. Oak Street,
Creston,
IA
50801
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The Temple Grand Theatre was an early movie house in Creston. It opened in 1903 in the Masonic Lodge building. It was badly damaged in a fire in 1909. The theatre and the Masonic Temple were destroyed by fire on the night of July 3, 1920. A new Masonic Temple was built (without a theatre) and opened in 1923.
Contributed by
Joe Vogel
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Recent comments (view all 3 comments)
The Temple Theatre was one of two movie houses listed at Creston in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other was the Comet, listed at 211 N. (probably a typo for W.) Adams.
The name Masonic Theatre appeared in reports of the 1920 fire appearing in safety and insurance industry journals, but I haven’t found it in any theater industry publications yet. Those invariably refer to the house as either the Temple Theatre or the Temple Grand Theatre.
Reports in various entertainment journals in late 1909 indicate that the Temple Grand had a major fire in December that year as well, causing some $40,000 in damage.
The 1905 Cahn guide gives the Temple Grand a capacity of 884. I suggest that the Masonic name was likely generic, and it should be removed, or at least switched to the aka.
This fire-prone theater also burned in 1909, the December 11 issue of The Show World reporting $40,000 dollars damage to the Temple Grand Opera House at Creston the previous day. Only $13,000 was covered by insurance. Spontaneous combustion of boiler coal stored in the basement was blamed for the fire.