State Theatre
201 Main Street,
Lewellen,
NE
69147
201 Main Street,
Lewellen,
NE
69147
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Mr. and Mrs. Carl Beard launched the new State Theatre in diminutive downtown Lewellen, a Nebraska town with just 419 residents. The State Theatre launched December 23, 1930 and the Beards welcomed the entire town for free on that first day of operation. Mary Beard took over the operation full time before selling out to Mr. and Mrs. Louis Bartak.
The theatre closed in 1958. Mary Beard bought the theatre to donate it for local, non-profit uses first by the Lion’s Club. Then, in 1962, the building became a youth center that featured two bowling alley lanes.
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Recent comments (view all 2 comments)
Prior to the opening of the State, silent movies were screened at Woodland Hall in a building that had been constructed in 1908. It has been touted as the oldest building in town and now houses an Art Gallery called The Most Unlikely Place. In the history relating to the gallery it is mentioned that the State Theatre was constructed just down the block at a site which now houses an insurance office. That would make it 201.
Interestingly, there is a second insurance office in town at 218 run by a Mary Beard. Really?
I just visited Lewellen recently and called to verify the Theater information this week. Woodman Hall was the name of the first movie theater that was built as a playhouse and a movie theater and it opened in 1908. Woodman Hall served as the local school for two years as well, waiting for the new school to be built.
Two doors down, the State Theater was built, and on the front of the State Theater are the dates 1932-1964. Carl Beard built this theater and when he passed away in 1946, his sister Mary took over the theater and then dedicated in her brother’s honor to be a rec center for the town. For a while, it had a two-lane bowling alley inside. The school in town still celebrates a “Mary Beard” day on her birthday as a remembrance of someone who did a lot for this small town which now has a population of 175.
The Woodman Hall Theater shut down when the State opened, as far as the local folks can remember, but the Hall then served as the community center until 1935, and after that as a warehouse for amorphous silicated mined outside of Lewellen. After WWII, from 1947 and into the 1960’s it was a grocery store, and then became two storefronts. When Paul Temple, the owner died, it was sold by his daughter Mary to Paul’s good friend Dennis Miller and in 2009 it became a cafe and an art gallery, which is what it is today, and is known as the “Most Unlikey Place”.
Thank you to the owners and staff of the “Most Unlikely Place” and to Ruth Radke, who works at the Lewellen Chamber of Commerce and is a local librarian, for this information.