Tulip Theatre
Central Avenue SE,
Orange City,
IA
51041
Central Avenue SE,
Orange City,
IA
51041
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I agree with SethG that 8th Street is impossible as the location of a theater open in the 1940s. A 1951 aerial view of Orange City shows nothing along 8th Street but a few houses, one larger building that might have been a church, and what might have been a gas station on the SE corner of Central Avenue. The Tulip Theatre had to have been farther north, in the old downtown along Central Avenue and the adjacent numbered side streets around Windmill Square.
The address is really confusing. I’m not sure how 8th St was decided on, but it can’t be right. There doesn’t seem to have ever been a Main St. What is now Central Ave was once called Washington. I can’t find a Tulip anywhere, either today or on the 1914 map, the most recent available online. Almost everything running N-S has been renamed and the numbered streets south of 1st St N once had people’s names. The numbered streets from 1st St N northwards always had numbers, only the N was added to distinguish them from their southern counterparts.
The Tulip opened on March 4, 1942 with Walter Pidgeon in “How Green Is My Valley” along with a few unnamed short subjects. It was closed during the first-to-second quarters of 1954, and was razed in July of that year to make way for an office.