Electric Theatre
260 State Street,
Garner,
IA
32901
260 State Street,
Garner,
IA
32901
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Opera House
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Replacing an earlier Opera House which was destroyed by fire in January 1901. The Opera House was located on the second floor of a building which was built in the early-1900’s. It was still operating as the Opera House in 1914/1915 and was later renamed Electric Theatre.
Contributed by
john story, SethG
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
Very lazy listing with no information. The address was 260 State St. This was located in a large building containing a bank and two storefronts, with an opera house on the second floor. It’s likely the theater operated in that space. The building was constructed sometime between 1900 and 1907, replacing a three-story opera house, perhaps after a fire.
The building is in decent shape today, although recently a huge chunk of the parapet on the south side was removed. This part of the ground floor was a Chinese restaurant, but it seems to have closed.
I very stupidly did not walk down to this block when I passed through, so I can’t supply a photo, but I have attached a Sanborn view showing the arrangement. The 1926 and 1934 maps are not available online, so I can’t say how long this might have operated.
The original First National Bank building burned January 1901, so this was constructed shortly afterward. This theater must have been closed before 1930, as the Lyric, which was apparently one block to the south, was the only theater in town when it closed late that year.
Opera House is the name of the only theater listed at Garner in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but the November 9, 1918 Moving Picture World mentions a house called the Garner Theatre. I haven’t found the name Electric Theatre associated with Garner in the trade journals. The 1926 FDY lists a 190-seat house called the Lyric Theatre. No clue yet if Garner and/or Lyric were aka’s for the Opera House.
Lyric cannot have been an aka, as it was destroyed in a fire in 1931. It was located one block south. Garner may well have been this one, and Electric clearly was at some point. Based on the cars we can see, this photo must date to sometime around 1910-1920.