Star Theatre
523 N. Main Street,
Carroll,
IA
51401
523 N. Main Street,
Carroll,
IA
51401
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This theater appears on the 1909 Sanborn, in the southern storefront of a two story brick commercial building constructed sometime between 1888 and 1893. The 1898 map shows a grocery here.
This theater was a ground floor operation. The building was extended to the rear by 1915, possibly expanding the auditorium. The theater remained in operation in 1923, but had reverted to retail by 1935.
The building today is in decent shape, although the ground floor has suffered an atrocious remodel. It is used as offices for a CPA.
Contributed by
Seth Gaines
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
A September 19, 2009 comment by kencmcintyre on the Carroll Theatre page quotes a March, 1973 article from the local newspaper that includes the line “[t]he first film house was the Bijou, opened in 1910 and located in the building now housing the G-Store on North Main Street.”
The G-store, whatever it was, appears to no longer exist, and I’ve been unable to find its then-address, but as the 523 N. Main house appears on the 1909 Sanborn there’s a good chance it was the town’s first, and the 1973 article just got the opening year wrong. By 1915 it was apparently no longer called the Bijou, as the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists only three houses at Carroll: the Carroll Opera House, on 5th Street, the Gem Theatre, and the Star Theater, on Main Street.
Oddly, there is no listing of the Royal, which a comment on our State Theatre page says had opened by 1913. Be that as it may, both the Royal and the Star are mentioned in issues of Moving Picture World in February and March, 1916, so they were not the same house. I’ve found no mentions of the Gem other than the AMPD, so by process of elimination it seems most likely that the house at 523 N. Main opened as the Bijou in 1909 and later became the Star.
Thanks for the ID, and for confirming the Opera House, I’ll add that.
As this house was still in operation in 1923 it is most likely the one that was called the Irving Theatre in 1921 and the Strand Theatre by 1926, when it was under the same management as the Royal. The Strand was listed in the 1926 and 1927 FDYs but gone in 1929. I don’t have access to the 1928 FDY, but the Strand might have closed when the Earle Theatre opened in 1927.
But you’re still confident that it was earlier the Bijou and likely the Star? This theater could definitely have been open up until the Earle killed it off, so it may also have been the Strand.
That does seem to be an awful lot of names for one place, especially when the Royal and Earle each had only one name change, and the Opera House may not have had any, unless one of these names was a later name for that.
The Bijou name is confirmed by this item from The Billboard of July 18, 1908: “Carroll- -Bijou, 320 North Main St.; Kreider & Rumford, mgrs.; S. C. 150; shows 3.” 320 was the theater’s address on the Sanborn map, and the building had clearly not yet been expanded to accommodate the later seating capacity of 300 in 1908. The item was in the Iowa section of the magazine’s “Nickelodeons” column.
The only other known name associated with Carroll that this house could have had is the Gem, but the only mention of that name I’ve found is the one in the AMPD, while we know that Star was still in use as late as 1916. I suspect the Gem was a short-lived storefront nickelodeon, or perhaps a briefly used aka for the Royal.