Park Theatre

Joe Vogel on August 26, 2013 at 9:01 pm

A January 24, 1904, article from the Springfield Republican (unfortunately behind a paywall) says that Sylvester Poli intended to lease the Grand Opera House at Springfield and rebuild it as a ground-floor theater. The reason I’m not assuming that this theater was the Grand Opera House is because I can find no other references to a theater of that name in Springfield. It isn’t even listed in any of the Cahn guides that are available on the Internet.

It is clear from other sources that Poli’s Theatre in Springfield was an existing house (Poli had not yet built his first theater, having spent the early years of his career adding existing theaters to his circuit), but I’d like to find at least one more source saying that the Grand Opera House was the theater in Springfield that he took over in 1904, or at least confirming the existence of a theater of that name in Springfield.