Lyric Theatre
221 High Street,
Fairport Harbor,
OH
44077
221 High Street,
Fairport Harbor,
OH
44077
2 people
favorited this theater
The Lyric Theatre in Fairport Harbor was opened in 19211. It closed in the 1960’s and has been decaying ever since. All the seats are gone and the plaster on the wall has vanished to bear bricks. The roof over the lobby is gone, yet you can sill see that it was once a great little theater. There appears to be some activity about the rest of the building but sadly the theater remains in ruin
Contributed by
Fred Fobell
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
The Lake and the Lyric and The Park Theatres must have been grand theatres looking at the ads for these theatres all side by side in the Painesville Paper.
The Lyric Theatre is at 221 High Street. A photo of the Lyric Theatre about 1954 appears on page 53 of Fairport Harbor from the Arcadia Publishing Company (Google Books preview.) The theater was located in the Lawrence Block. Various issues of The American Contractor from late 1920 and early 1921 reported that Cleveland architect R. H. Hinsdale was designing a theater, store, and office building at Fairport for E. E. Lawrence. It must have been the Lyric.
The theater probably opened before the end of 1921. This newspaper article in which I found the address said that the Lyric closed in 1961, so it had a run of forty years.
The article is either inaccurate or that person was misremembering the Sound of Music, which was released in 1965. OTOH, the News-Herald has never been known for its factchecking.
buckguy’s observation is correct. The Sound of Music was released in 1965, and since it had a long roadshow run it is likely that it wouldn’t have reached Fairport Harbor until 1966, or even 1967. However, I’ve found another source saying that the Lyric closed in 1962. It’s possible, as buckguy pointed out, that someone just mis-remembered seeing that movie at the Lyric. It’s also possible that the Lyric, like hundreds of small town theaters during their final days, closed and then reopened for a time, perhaps more than once. Until conclusive information becomes available it’s probably best just to say that the house closed in the 1960s.