Plaza Theatre
120 N. Franklin Street,
Manchester,
IA
52057
120 N. Franklin Street,
Manchester,
IA
52057
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A news bite announcing a forthcoming special program at the Plaza appeared in the September 22, 1915 The Manchester Democrat.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory has four listings for Manchester, but two appear to be duplicates: there is a house called the Idle Theatre and a listing for McCormick & Thorpe Idle Theatre. A third listing is for the Model Theatre, which is accounted for.
The name of the house at the Plaza’s eventual address in 1913 must have been either the Idle, for which no location is given, or the fourth listing in the directory, the Lyric Theatre, which was listed on Franklin Street. Whatever its name was in 1915, it was already being called the Plaza in the 1926 FDY, when it was the only theater listed at Manchester.
Current use is an appliance dealer, and the sentence about the Castle should be removed as irrelevant and outdated. The first sentence is also incorrect, there was at least one other.
Dates are wrong. This theater first appears on the Feb. 1913 Sanborn. The building was an old commercial structure from before 1886. The 1905 map shows a clothing store there.
Between 1913 and 1921, it was nearly doubled in depth, and you can see a seam in the brick on the north wall where this was done. The addition included a lot of windows and a doorway, so it’s unlikely the auditorium was enlarged.