Colonial Theatre
21 1st Street SE,
Oelwein,
IA
50662
21 1st Street SE,
Oelwein,
IA
50662
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A notice that one George Philips had bought the old Methodist Church at Oelwein and would remodel it for use as a hall appeared in the April 6, 1907 issue of The Improvement Bulletin.
The October 16, 1915 Moving Picture World mentions a house in Oelwein called the Colonial, recently purchased by a Paul R. Whitney, formerly of Albert Lea, Minnesota. It might be that the purchase didn’t go through at that time, as the June 10, 1916 issue of Motography also said that the Colonial had recently been purchased by Mr. Whitney, who planned extensive improvements.
A church of that era would be fairly likely to have been designed in a Colonial Revival style, which I think increases the chances that it would have been named the Colonial when it was converted into a theater.