Opera House
200 N. Sturgeon Street,
Montgomery City,
MO
63361
200 N. Sturgeon Street,
Montgomery City,
MO
63361
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That’s interesting about the Ritz location. I wonder if that could have been the Ferguson Opera House? It went back at least as far as 1893, and the last mention of it I’ve found is from January, 1909. Guides give the Ferguson a larger capacity than the house on Spurgeon Street– 600 or 550 to the other’s 450. The 1894 Donaldson guide lists it as Ferguson’s New Opera house. And the 1909 map does show that broad stairway going up from the Allen Street side, so the theater must have been only recently abandoned at that time.
The Opera House on Sturgeon Street must have been extensively altered, or might have been a replacement for an earlier house, as the earliest guides available, Henry Miner’s 1884 and 1887 editions, list it with 800 seats, way more than the 450 it has later.
It gets a bit more complicated, because the 1900 map shows the Ritz building as an opera house. The 1909 map doesn’t show that. We definitely should put the Ritz in a separate listing.
I’d say the evidence that the Opera House and the Ritz were different theaters is good enough that we should have different pages for them. An early mention of movies in the Opera House appeared in the August 7, 1908 Montgomery Tribune which said a group of local businessmen had leased the Ferguson Opera House and would put in a moving picture show with changes of program three times a week. It would be a five and ten cent house.
As for the Ritz, this Facebook page has a photo of it dated 1981, and the caption says it was on the east corner of 2nd and Allen Street, so definitely not the Opera House. The site is now a parking lot.
Additionally, the 1914-15 AMPD lists the Idle Hour Theatre on E 2nd St. Given that no commercial buildings face that part of 2nd, it likely referred to the large rear entrance to the Masonic building.
I think this listing may conflate two theaters. The Opera House is listed at 450 seats through 1929. Montgomery City does not appear in the 1930 Yearbook.
1931 lists the Opera House with 350 seats, and 1932 onward lists the Ritz with 350. I wonder if that isn’t an error. The 1932 map does not show a theater in the Masonic building, but shows a lodge hall on the 2nd floor. Being an upstairs theater, it may have been closed due to fire codes. The 1932 map does show a theater at what would have been 121-123 W 2nd. It was likely the Ritz, and was demolished long ago.
“The Ritz Theatre, owned by Otto Ingwersen, ceased operations after its show the night of May 28. It is unknown when the theatre will resume.” — Boxoffice, June 13, 1960
The address is wrong. Should be 200-202. 209 is a narrow one-story building, which was used as stores, and is now a restaurant.
The opera house is already shown with film equipment on the 1917 Sanborn. The projection was from an iron-clad wooden box at the rear of the second floor building, with stage and scenery on the front (Sturgeon St) side. Ground floor occupants were a hardware store on the north side, and the post office on the south. The lot is empty on the 1909 map, and current usage is a Masonic Lodge and a laundromat.