Capitol Theatre

Originally built as the Knights of Columbus Auditorium in May 1924, the K of C found themselves running it as a movie theatre within months, but must have had trouble running it, as in November 1925, producer Irving M. Lesser’s Irving Theater Corp. signed a lease and remodeled it under the new name of Capitol Theatre. At this time, Vaudeville was mixed into the programming.

In October 1929, cartoonist and former manager George W. Walker took the lease over from K of C and later that month, installed sound in 1929 with Tone-O-Graph sound equipment. “Fox Movietone Follies” was the first sound film that played there. This was not to last for long, as in September of the next year, Walker died of an undisclosed illness. The theatre remained closed (being occasionally open for public events) until June 1934 when it reopened. The bank that owned the theatre sued the intermittent managers and it was leased by Skouras Theatres in February 1935. At this point, the seating capacity dropped from 750 to 494. Skouras' luck with it was not for long, as on April 2, 1936, an arsonist set the theatre on fire. The damages were said to exceed that of $100,000. The building was razed in February 1938.

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