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Tobin Opera House
1012 Jackson Street,
Sidney,
NE
69160
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Opera House, Electric Theatre
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The place where many local residents first saw films was the Tobin Opera House. The Opera House was built in 1883 and taken over at the end of a 20-year lease by the Tobin family. Renamed the Tobin Opera House, it had a grand reopening on November 21 , 1903. In 1908 it housed the Electric Theatre playing motion pictures.
Renamed the Tobin Theatre and, also, the Tobin Opera House, the venue relied more heavily on movies with four showings of “Birth of a Nation” selling out on October 21-22, 1916. Movie screenings were discontinued following a December 12, 1924 screening. Live events ranging from dances to boxing took place until the venue went dark in 1930 and was never converted to sound film. The Tobin Opera House was torn down by a WPA crew in December of 1938.
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Recent comments (view all 1 comments)
The site of Tobin’s Opera House is just outside the boundaries of the Sidney Historic Business District, but the NRHP registration form for the district nevertheless notes that it was located on the north side of Jackson Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. As the buildings on the west side of 10th Avenue at Jackson are part of the historic district, and the corner of 11th Avenue is occupied by the Elks Lodge and City Auditorium building erected in 1929 before the Tobin was demolished, the only place it could have been was on the parking lot across the street from the Cheyenne County Courthouse. That would be somewhere in the range of 1012-1022 Jackson Street.