Plaza Theatre
119 W. Lexington Avenue,
Independence,
MO
64050
119 W. Lexington Avenue,
Independence,
MO
64050
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I added a picture from a blah winter day long ago. On the 1916 Sanborn map, this building houses a bookstore/stationers. It appears to be vacant on the ‘19 streetview.
According to a book about Independence which I cited on the Electric Theatre page, the Electric Theatre was at 215 N. Main Street from the 1910s into the 1940s. I’ve been unable to discover any definite AKAs for the Plaza, but if Electric was already in use for the house on Main Street, that wouldn’t have been one of them.
If the two items I cited in my April 4, 2012, comment on this page are indeed about the Plaza, then this house might have been known as the New Elliot Theatre when it opened. A. E. Elliot built the original Elliot Theatre in 1912, and rebuilt the house after it was destroyed by a fire in 1916. I’ve found references to a house called the New Elliot Theatre in the trade journals beginning in the mid-1920s. It seems very likely that the New Elliot became the Plaza. I’ve been unable to discover either the location or the fate of the theater Elliot built in 1916.
Here is a video about the efforts of a man who is converting the former Plaza Theater in to an amusement arcade named after an Electric Theater that once was on Main Street in Independence which apparently was located nearby (or might have been a previous name for this theater?).
The Plaza might be the theater mentioned in this item from the January 2, 1924, issue of The Film Daily: “Independence, Mo. — Work has begun on the new theater on Lexington St. A. E. Elliot is behind the project.”
Although it was published more than a year earlier, this item from the August 3, 1922, issue of Manufacturers Record also might be about the Plaza:
There are no theaters on Lexington Avenue but the Plaza, and satellite views show its building to be about 40x164 feet.