Campus Theatre
230 S. Knoblock Street,
Stillwater,
OK
74074
230 S. Knoblock Street,
Stillwater,
OK
74074
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Opened May 5, 1939 with “The Lady’s From Kentucky,” the trade press ranked it among the Top Ten New Theatres launched in the year of 1939.
I took photos of the Campus Theater in 1990. It was sitting empty. When I heard it was to be torn down I enquired as to why. The answer was that it had been converted into an indoor mall at some point and it was to expensive to restore.
If you go to my web site, http://www.cartart.co/campus.html, you will find the photo I took in 1993. I worked on it in Photoshop to make it look like it did in 1939. I cleaned up all the peeling paint, rusted chrome trim and replaced the missing sign. The Stillwater library had a pamphlet from the opening of this theater in 1939.
Linkrot repair: The brief 1939 Boxoffice article (with one photo) about the Campus Theatre that kencmcintyre linked to is now at this link.
Yes some areas have no regard for the history and style of the buildings there. A true waste of a wonderful building.
Here is an article about the Campus in November 1939, from Boxoffice magazine:
http://tinyurl.com/ybbuvk3
So sad! Thanks for the article.
Read it and weep…scroll down past the story on Stillwater’s Hideaway Pizza’s 50th anniversary to the timeline, and there is the answer. My photo above was taken during the final year of the building’s existence.
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The address of Hideaway is 230 S Knoblock, Stillwater, OK.
I’m pretty sure this one has been demolished with a new building rebuilt on the site. The building that currently sits on the lot is only one story and hosts Stillwater’s Hideaway Pizza. If it is the same building, then it has been significantly altered. Check out the bird’s eye view below and compare to Seymour Cox’s photo:
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The Campus Theatre was originally built in the early 1930s as a single-aisle theater 25 feet wide, with 450 seats. A few years later, the operators decided the house was too small, and the original architect, Jack Corgan, was called in to design an expansion. The plans for this were published in the February 1, 1937, issue of Boxoffice. The project called for widening the auditorium by 15 feet and adding a small balcony to one side of the booth, increasing the seating capacity to 650.
I don’t know if the plans announced in 1937 were fully carried out, but the Campus was definitely remodeled two years later. The January 7, 1939, said that construction on the Campus Theatre in Stillwater, designed by Jack Corgan, was underway, and the March 11, 1939, issue of Boxoffice said that the theater was then nearing completion.
Like the Aggie and Mecca, already in operation in Stillwater, the Campus was owned and operated by a partnership consisting of Griffith Amusement Company and Claude Leachman.
Should have waited to post these two LIFE photos together. Anyway, here’s another angle of the Campus Theatre,
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This 1951 quality view of the Campus Theatre comes courtesy of LIFE,
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The Campus is still a striking presence on the campus corner area of Stillwater – here it is in 2000:
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Actually the Campus Theatre design could be classified as International Moderne. It reminds me of a Worlds Fair pavilion!
Wonder if a prof from the School of Architecture created this little masterpiece?
To view 1940 images, type in word “campus”, then search,
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