Princess Theatre
1230 Washington Street,
Eldora,
IA
50627
1230 Washington Street,
Eldora,
IA
50627
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The 1915 Sanborn shows a theatre operating in a small two-story brick over wood building, which was constructed sometime between 1886 and 1893. The 1911 map shows a restaurant here.
This theatre was not a success, and by 1920 it had become a variety store. The 1920 map shows a theatre two doors north, so the operation may have moved.
The building has been badly remodeled, and covered with plastic siding. It had been a florists, but the most recent streetview shows it vacant.
Contributed by
Seth Gaines
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Recent comments (view all 2 comments)
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists four movie houses at Eldora: The Diamond and the Bijou, both on Marion (now Edgington) Avenue, and a generically listed M. P. Theatre and a house called the Princess Theater, neither of which were listed with a location. I suspect that the generic M. P. Theatre was actually the Grand, which appears to have opened that year. It was on Marion Avenue, so the likely occupant of this building on Washington Street was the Princess.
Rats! I thought two of the theaters lately added were on Edgington Street, but I see that three were on Washington and the one added on Edgington was probably the Diamond. That means the Princess might have been in either this building or the one at 1217 Washington. So we still have no likely location for the Bijou, which an early reference in Moving Picture World (from January, 1911) indicates could have been Eldora’s first successful movie house.