Union Theatre

Joe Vogel on May 24, 2026 at 1:06 am

This one is a puzzle. There are Sanborn maps of Westerly from 1912 and 1921, and no theaters are noted on Union Street on either of them. I see only three buildings on Union Street that might have housed a theater, but only one seems very likely. That is a wood frame building at 6 Union Street which in 1912 was marked as “Club Room” (and thus could have been the AOH hall, which is not indicated anywhere else on the map,) and by 1921 had become a synagogue, which it remains today, the Congregation Sharah Zedek.

The other two possibilities are a building on the corner of Main Street which was unidentified in 1912 and which had become a garage by 1921, and the Old Town Hall, across the street and down a bit from the new Town Hall which the map designates as being “from plans.” The Old Town Hall is a compact, three-story brick building which the map says has the town clerk on the 1st floor and a hall on the second floor. It would have been rather small for a theater, and with very little space for the vaudeville the Union advertised. By 1921 it was identified as a Manuel Training School.

The “Club Room”/Synagogue building, which the maps indicate was “16' to eaves” was spacious and could certainly have accommodated a vaudeville stage, is definitely the most likely location for the Union Theatre, despite an unusual location atop a hill with a long stairway leading up to the building (Google street view.)