Durand Theatre
208 N. Saginaw Street,
Durand,
MI
48429
208 N. Saginaw Street,
Durand,
MI
48429
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The first Durand Theatre to operate in Durand has its own page on Cinema Treasures. This was the second Durand Theatre to operate in Durand, MI. It opened around 1947 and was still open in 1957.
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john story
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The July 9, 1938 issue of Boxoffice said:
Vintage photos, including the one on our photo page, show that this Durand Theatre was not at 208 N. Saginaw Street, but at 204 N. Saginaw, which is on the ground floor of the Masonic Temple building.A photo on this Facebook post is dated ca 1917 and shows the same building, and the sign over the space later occupied by the Durand Theatre is marked by a sign saying Theatorium. The Theatorium is listed in the FDY from 1926 into the early 1930s with 298 seats. By 1936 the Durand Theatre is listed, also with 298 seats. So this house was the Theatorium from the late 1910s into the early 1930s, and then became the Durand Theatre. At this point things take a turn.
The photo on this Facebook post shows the same Durand Theatre marquee as the photo on our page, but it is on a different building, two doors up at 208-210 N. Saginaw. That’s the address given in the 1949 FDY, which gives the house a seating capacity of 422. The movie on the marquee in the Facebook photo came out in 1946, but the 1947 FDY still lists the Durand with 298 seats. The 1948 FDY doesn’t list theaters for some reason, so the new Durand doesn’t show up until 1949, but I suspect that it opened in 1947.
While the building that housed the first Durand Theatre is still standing, it looks like the new one from the 1940s is entirely or at least partly gone. The building there now is lower than the theater in the photo, and there is a parking lot behind it where the auditorium would have been. I haven’t been able to discover what became of the second Duran at 208-210 N. Saginaw, or when it closed, but the Theatorium/first Durand at 204 N. Saginaw looks to have operated for at least three decades.
The Theatorium is listed in a 1921 Polk directory, along with a house called the Star Theatre, but is not in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which lists only a house called the Family Theatre. Family, of course, might have been an earlier name for the Theatorium, or the Star, or neither.