Uptown Theatre
1399 Central Avenue,
Dubuque,
IA
52001
1399 Central Avenue,
Dubuque,
IA
52001
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We have a discrepancy in opening dates. The October 30, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World said: “A new moving picture theater opened its doors for business at the corner of Fourteenth and Clay streets. Jake Rosenthal is manager of the new enterprise.”
Generally if there’s discrepancy between a Sanborn map and a trade journal item I’m inclined to trust the map, but would MPW publish a notice of an event three or more months before it happened? Is the February 1909 date on the map itself, or just on the web page serving it? I can imagine the LOC misdating a map, as I’ve seen mistakes on that site before. It seems more likely than either Sanborn or MPW making this particular error.
Directories list the Royal at 1397, which would be the same building. Maps all show it as 1395. The Royal was opened in 1909, sometime after the Sanborn map was issued in February. It is listed through 1913. The Liberty was likely a wartime renaming. It is listed 1918-1929, after which it became the Uptown. The building was an old two-story brick commercial building, almost certainly pre-1884 (the relevant page is missing from this map), but definitely constructed before 1891, and expanded to the rear by 1909. The 1909 map shows it as a vacant store. The building still existed in 1950, but this section of the block is now a parking lot.
The 1914-1915American Motion Picture Directory lists a house called the Royal Theatre at 14th and Clay Street. Could be the same place.