Picture Show
721 P Street,
Beaver City,
NE
68926
721 P Street,
Beaver City,
NE
68926
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The Picture Show was the first movie theater in Beaver City, Nebraska. Located upstairs in a building on the north side of the city square, it opened in 1914.
Some of the early movies included “Idaho Bill’s Wild West Show”.
For many years after the theater closed, the ground floor was used as a grocery store. The building became vacant and in serious need of repair and was destroyed by fire in September 2011.
Contributed by
Ivan Kent Steinke
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
The Picture Show burnt down in a three alarm fire in September of 2011
Address: 721 P Street, Beaver Cioty, NE 68926
Nearly this entire listing is wrong. The north side of the square is between 9th and 10th. The correct address was something like 916. In addition, the information about the fire is false. The building was already gone. The 1922 map shows the theater in a two story building, the third from the corner. By 1926, it seems to have closed. The 1936 map shows a store there. The older streetviews show a run-down bar in a one story building at this location. The 2012 streetview shows all the buildings still there. Three buildings are missing from the 2023 streetview. The photo of the Auditorium is unrelated, and should be removed.
Aside from the Auditorium, the only theater names I’ve found associated with Beaver City prior to the Oriental are Axstern, Lyric, and Liberty. The first was the name coined for a house opened in the Armory building by partners named Axtell and Stearn, noted in the February 12, 1916 Moving Picture World. The May 26, 1917 issue of Motography said that W. H. Williams had bought the Lyric Theatre at Beaver City, and the October 27, 1921 issue of the local newspaper said that “Harold Lloyd comedies are the feature this week at the Liberty Theatre in Beaver City.”