Academy Theatre
314 Locust Street,
Sterling,
IL
61081
314 Locust Street,
Sterling,
IL
61081
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Hate to be a contrarian but there was no Academy Theatre in Sterling’s history. Robert T. LaGrille opened the Grand Theatre in the Galt & Tracy block in 1914 at 314 Locust to show moving pictures. It suffered a projection fire on June 16, 1924 and did not appear to reopen. The space was used as a produce stand. In 1929 and 1930, the space was gutted and floor leveled for retail purposes.
After the Grand’s departure, the Illini Theatre moved in as the final movie theater in the Academy of Music Building at 320 Locust. The Illini Theatre replaced the auto showroom for John Hoppler’s Oakland-Pontiac Automobile Agency which moved to its larger space at 411 Locust. The Illini was ostensibly the replacement for the neighboring Grand and was equipped for sound. The 650-seat theatre picked up some of the live events that had been programming for the upper level Academy of Music after its conversion to a dance hall in 1925. The Illini converted to sound in 1929 but went out of business in 1941 exiting during the Sears remodeling.
The upper floor Academy of Music had opened on December 4, 1878 with a traveling concert by the Marie Roze-Mapleson (she the singer and he the director). The first films were shown there in 1897, the first fire caused by the films was in 1898 with a 1901 fire almost destroying the building.
Prior to the Illini Theater’s entry, larger “road show” movies were shown in the upper floor Opera House and advertised as occurring at the Academy of Music including D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance.” Second-floor opera houses were in steep decline due to safety concerns and the lack of a need for opera houses as their profitability had waned during World War I in smaller cities and towns.
The Academy of Music’s opera house space on the second floor was converted to a Dance Hall opening December 9, 1925 effectively ending the Academy as it was created. Events at the hall were advertised as transpiring at the Academy of Music until its final event in 1931. Sears moved in in 1940/1. The third floor space not captured by the Dance Hall or the Sears retail store that followed apparently remains or remained into the 21st Century. The lettering of the Academy was removed by Sears and restored decades later.
Added a photo of the building today, and a Sanborn showing the arrangement when the theater was open.
The Academy was not in the opera house space, it was in the ground floor. The opera house seems to have still been in use in 1916, possibly only for live performances.
The Academy took its name from its location in the Academy of Music Building, alternately known as the Galt & Tracy Block, or the George S. Tracy Block. This was built sometime before 1884, and had an opera house on the second and third floor. The theater was definitely operating by 1916, when the map shows a one story addition at the rear of the space (this is now gone). In 1910, the space was a drugstore.
The building has been given a rather unsympathetic remodel (a Sterling specialty), and the entire thing is now a furniture store. 314 was originally the southernmost of six storefronts.