Bijou Theatre
615 2nd Street,
Ida Grove,
IA
51445
615 2nd Street,
Ida Grove,
IA
51445
No one has favorited this theater yet
Showing 2 comments
I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know how this ended up with the wrong name, since the Princess is a completely different building.
This was most likely the Bijou. While I can’t find an exact opening date, it appears in the local weekly paper, The Ida County Pioneer, as early as 1908. Ads say It featured “Moving Pictures and Illustrated Songs” and “No Vibration to the Pictures”.
The July 16, 1913 issue of the Pioneer had a front page article announcing that construction of a new theatre in Ida Grove, a couple blocks down 2nd street from this theatre, will begin shortly, and that the name of the new venue would be “The Princess”. The last paragraph carried the header “Bijou Is Closed”, which read in part:
Lee Horn, who will manage the new house closed his old house, The Bijou, Saturday night in order that he may devote his whole time to the work of erecting and equipping this new playhouse.
So the closing date for the Bijou was July 12, 1913. The Princess opened on November 22 that year, in 1917 the name changed to the King, which has its own listing on Cinema Treasures.