Eagle Theatre

911 Main Street,
Lexington, MO 64067

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junglejan2
junglejan2 on August 19, 2019 at 7:06 am

JOEL VOGEL

   I don't know where you got the 18 years old. I was 10 years old
                   when I started running projectors at the FARRIS THEATER in 
                   Richmond Mo and started running at the HI-WAY 13 drive-in in 
                   Henrietta Mo in 1950 when it opened in 1950.
SethG
SethG on August 14, 2019 at 8:43 pm

I think the NRHP listing is in error. Those older surveys were often very poorly researched. The 1918 Sanborn shows the ground floor with a saloon on the east and west of the ground floor, a barber with billiard room behind it in the center, a hall on the second floor, and a bar room on the east side of the third floor. I think the theater opened at some point later. Current usage is offices. Listing needs to be corrected as to the location of the other theater.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on April 30, 2018 at 9:12 am

Becoming a drive-in projectionist at 18 must have been a dream job.

junglejan2
junglejan2 on April 29, 2018 at 10:04 pm

Hi Joe. I was the projectionist at the HI WAY 13 DRIVE-IN THEATER when it opened in 1950. I was born in Camden Mo in 1932 and my grandfather use to take me to the Eagle Theater when I was very small and when I started at the Drive In I became aquantied with the projectionist at the Mainstreet Theater and would visit quite often on Saturday before going to work at the drive-in.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on April 29, 2018 at 9:52 pm

junglejan2 is correct. We have the wrong address for the Mainstreet Theatre. An inventory of Lexington’s historic buildings made when it was still standing says that the Mainstreet (or Main Street, as it was styled in the Film Daily Yearbooks) was at the corner of 13th (John Shea Drive on the Google map) and Main. A NRHP registration form for Lexington’s historic district says that it was at 1222-1224 Main Street. That would put it almost four blocks from the Eagle building.

junglejan2
junglejan2 on April 29, 2018 at 2:19 pm

I went to the Eagle Theater quite often when I was little
and it was quite a few blocks from the Mainstreet Theater.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on September 3, 2014 at 9:11 am

This PDF has an inventory of historic buildings in Lexington, and includes a paragraph about the Eagle Building. The building dates from around 1915, and had a theater in it from the beginning. The document doesn’t say if the house was called the Eagle Theatre in its early days.

So far I haven’t found any references to the Eagle Theatre in any of the trade publications. I’ve found references to a Grand Opera House (aka Wright’s Grand Opera House, Grand Theatre) in Lexington, but some of them go all the way back to the 1900s, so I don’t think the Grand was the same house as the Eagle. There was also a house called the Princess Theatre.

The Eagle building in Lexington was built for the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which was founded in Seattle in 1898 by six theater owners, including John Cort of the Orpheum circuit and John Considine of the Sullivan and Considine circuit.