Wonderland Theatre

Gary businessman T.W. Englehart opened the Wonderland Theatre on July 20, 1907. Billed as “The Finest Moving Picture Theatre in Indiana,” it was a five-cent showplace managed by Patrick Riley. It also claimed to be “the original moving picture show of Hammond”.

The Wonderland Theatre was located on the north side of State Street fifty feet west of Hohman Avenue. The address at the time was 101 State Street, about 147 State Street if it existed today.

Englehart closed the Wonderland Theatre in July 1909. His Princess Theatre, launched in November 1908 on Hohman Avenue nearby, had siphoned off business, and the Wonderland sat at a prime location.

The Wonderland lease was sold to Gus Bereolos, whose Palace of Sweets candy store at 126 Hohman Avenue backed up to the east side of the Wonderland Theatre building. The Bereolos brothers remodeled the Wonderland Theatre and connected it to their Hohman Avenue store creating an L-shaped footprint that would be home to the “finest confectionary and soft drink emporium in northern Indiana”.

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