Colonial Theatre

Joe Vogel on February 28, 2015 at 10:53 pm

The Colonial Theatre was in operation by 1903. Shakespeare on the Stage, a 1915 book by William Winter, cites a May 11, 1903, matinée of a production of The Taming of the Shrew at the house. The 1909-1910 edition of the Cahn guide listed the Colonial as a ground floor house with 1,050 seats. The 1912 guide has Taylor’s Colonial Theatre with 1,078 seats including 440 on the orchestra floor, 238 in the balcony, and 400 in a gallery. The rebuilding in 1924 was probably quite drastic to accommodate the 1,359 seats it had later.

The September 9, 1940, issue of the Peekskill Highland Democrat said that the Colonial Theatre, which had been built “…nearly a half century ago….” was soon to be demolished. The house had been bought from the Singers by Paramount, who also acquired the recently-remodeled Peekskill Theatre. A fire had damaged the Colonial and the seats had been removed from the balcony as a result.

I don’t know if the Colonial was one of those theaters that the FDY continued listing after it was gone or not, but it certainly could have been.

The 1940 article can be found in column four near the bottom of this single-page PDF.