Scenic Theatre
325 5th Street,
Correctionville,
IA
51016
325 5th Street,
Correctionville,
IA
51016
1 person
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This small theatre was in a single story brick storefront, one of two almost certainly built in 1892 in conjunction with the larger Fitchner & Laub store/Columbia Theatre located to the west. The building was a hardware store which was converted into the Scenic Theatre in 1913. The decorative bricks along the cornice were identical.
It’s likely that this theatre was opened to allow the opera house next door to concentrate on live acts, high school graduations, etc. It suffered a fire in 1927 and closed. The slightly larger Radio Theatre (later Ritz Theatre) had opened to the north in 1922.
This building was well kept, and seems to have been used as a residence. Possibly damaged when the opera house partially collapsed in September 2010, it was rather crudely hacked off of its twin to the east, and is today the site of a crummy prefab auto parts store.
Note that the historical address was 129 Erwin, but this was changed at some point.
Contributed by
Seth Gaines
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Recent comments (view all 3 comments)
Two theater names associated with Correctionville were the Scenic and the Radio, or New Radio. Both appear in the FDY in 1926 and 1927, while the 1928 edition lists only the Ritz Theatre. It’s possible that the Ritz was one or the other of those houses, renamed, and if so then this theater at 325 Fifth must have been the other.
One other Correctionville theater name is revealed in the 1996 obituary of Doris L. Grawburg Beers, which says that during the silent movie era she played the piano at the New Radio Theatre and, before that, at a house called the Luna Theatre. It says her piano playing career lasted six years, and as the Radio apparently closed or was renamed in 1927, she might have begun playing as early as 1922, when she was thirteen years old.
One other bit of information probably useful is that a Scenic Theatre was listed at Correctionville in Polk’s 1914 Iowa Gazetteer, with no address alas, so it’s not possible to say if it was the same Scenic that was operating in 1926.
It’s crazy that such a tiny little town had so much going on. We may never be able to untangle it.
This theatre location was known as the Scenic, located between the Columbia Opera House (also used as a theatre) and the Weeks drug store (then operated by C. C. Yockey). The building was originally the New Hardware store, but it was converted into a full-time theatre in 1913 (I’ve attached a photo circa 1920) with “a slant floor, plush chairs and a musician’s balcony in the city style,” as reported in the Correctionville News. After a fire in 1927, the Scenic closed permanently, leaving the New Radio theatre (renamed The Ritz in 1928) as the only full-time theatre building in the vibrant little city. The Ritz building is still standing, though it ended its life as a movie theatre in 1968.