Stark Theatre
110 E. Main Street,
Toulon,
IL
61483
110 E. Main Street,
Toulon,
IL
61483
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The facade as described is at odds with the photo, but Chuck is incredibly unreliable. The 1939 map does not show a second story. I wonder if the photo is not from after the 1946 remodel.
Listed as the State in the 1938 and 1939 Yearbooks. Was that just an error?
Moline architect M.R. Beckstrom drew up the Stark Theatre plans in 1936. It opened as a streamline moderne movie theatre and seems to be largely unchanged to its closure. The Stark Theatre opened on February 18, 1937 for Princeton’s H.V. and John W. Bailey with “Polo Joe” with Joe E. Brown. Lyle Leek dropped the venue to weekend plus operation in its final year. He closed it permanently on December 18, 1954. With just over 1,100 people in town, television had pretty much ruined small town movie houses like the Stark.
The vacant Stark Theatre attracted a new audience with a colony of bees in its marquee in July of 1957. Local beekeeper Henry Robots corralled them and added them to his colony. The theatre was razed on September 10, 1973. It opened and closed as the Stark.
Not sure where that address came from, but it’s ridiculously wrong. This is almost certainly the theater that appears on the Oct. 1939 Sanborn, at 109-111. At some later point, the addresses were changed, and the address is now 110. It has not been demolished, but has been butchered down to a dull flat-fronted box. It appears to be used as a residence.