Fairbanks Theatre

24 W. Main Street,
Springfield, OH 45501

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SethG
SethG on May 8, 2021 at 1:48 pm

The address is incorrect. The theater entrance was at 24.

SethG
SethG on May 8, 2021 at 12:12 pm

Joe is right, there was never a hotel in this building. Most of it was bank offices, and there were some stores in the ground floor. The auditorium was a 3-4 story brick structure that completely filled in the ‘L’. It’s still shown on the 1955 map.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on December 2, 2013 at 7:17 pm

I’m sure the auditorium is gone. There’s a big parking lot behind the L-shaped Fairbanks Building now, where the theater must have been. The office building itself isn’t big enough, or the right shape, to have housed a theater.

I don’t know where the story that the Fairbanks Building was originally a hotel started, but it’s all over the Internet. Period sources (1907, 1911, 1922) all indicate that it was an office building with a theater and a few shops from the beginning. A brief biography (published 1911) of Newton Hamilton Fairbanks, who built the building, describes it as “…one of the largest bank, store and office buildings (fireproof) in Ohio; this building also contains Fairbanks Theater.”