Madrid Theatre

Photos added and description credit John Dunbar.

“The first building in Kansas City to have air conditioning. There used to be an icehouse next door that moved blocks of ice via a conveyor belt…these ornate looking circular fixtures had large fans above them which circulated the cold air from the ice.”

The (Fox) Madrid’s final day as a movie theater—with 10c admission—was Friday, January 16, 1942 (the day of Carole Lombard’s plane crash), with a one-day-only-marquee of Janet Gaynor & Fredric March in the 1937 version of A STAR IS BORN, and Randolph Scott & former silent-film star Hope Hampton (in her last-ever screen role) in 1938’s THE ROAD TO RENO. There are no listings for it as an active movie theater in the city newspaper after that. [Kansas City Star]

The June 5, 1926, issue of The Reel Journal said that the new Madrid Theatre in Kansas City had been designed by the architectural firm of DeFoe & Besecke (Victor DeFoe and Walter A. Besecke.)

Its for sale because Karl Schimell, owner of Madrid Theatre can’t get a liquor license besides having a lack of parking.
He has also heard that lightrail will be coming down Main Street (in about another 8 years) which for any business is bad news unless your James B. Nutter.
Karl Schimell is very unhappy with the new catering ordinance since he can’t have his salsa every Friday night.
Whoever buys the theatre will have to deal with the neighborhood association.

Just think. The neighborhood told him it was a very, very bad idea to renovate the theatre. I guess they were right.

Here is a photo from July 2006:
http://tinyurl.com/ugzj5

1500 seats does seem excessive, but 700 is too few. I count 31 seats across the auditorium in most of the last eleven rows (the loge section), and there are probably three more seats in most of the 18 or 19 rows (it’s difficult to count the most distant rows, the picture being too small) beyond the loge section. So there are a bit over 900 seats visible on the orchestra floor, and the picture appears to have been taken from the lower part of another section of seating (perhaps stadium style) at the rear of the house. There could be perhaps another three hundred or so seats, unseen behind the camera’s position. The ceiling doesn’t look high enough for a true balcony to be back there, so it’s probably just a few rows of seats on risers. I doubt that the total could have been much over 1200 seats, though.

I went to see a concert there and the sound system in really bad. I had the hardest time of finding a parking space. It’s scary in that part of the city of Kansas City. The street people was asking me for money. It was an awful night. I won’t be going down or up there again.