Theatre

SethG on March 24, 2024 at 10:01 am

Since we know the other early theater was the Majestic, this either has to be the Electric, or the Electric was one door to the south in the Briggs Block, and came and went between maps.

Joe Vogel on March 24, 2024 at 6:05 am

The September 12, 1908 Moving Picture World has two items datelined Nevada, Iowa, one of which might be about this theater. One of them also has what is apparently another variant misspelling of the old street name.

The first item says “[t]he Electric Theater is the name of a new amusement house which has been opened for the public.” The second item, which appears a short way down the same page, says “Fred H. Klove has fitted up the Briggs room, on Lyon Street, and has opened a moving picture and vaudeville house. Both of these items could be about the same theater, as the trade journals were prone to doing that sort of thing in their early days. Also, and October 30 item in the same journal says that Klove had sold his theater to ”…Messrs. Coates and Ball….“ so he didn’t operate it for very long.

The reference to “Briggs room” in the one item is interesting, as this theater in the J. Ray Block was apparently next door to the Briggs Block, which was (and is) at 1102-1104 6th Street and, according to its description in a downtown Nevada walking tour (PDF here) once housed “…a newsstand with art sales….” It could be that the Briggs family, who were quite prominent in town, had bought the Ray Block prior to 1908, or the reference in MPW might have simply been a mistake.

Incidentally, the NRHP form does have a mistake, as it says that the 1928 Circle was the third movie theater opened in Nevada. The well documented Palace Theatre of 1913, with the evidence of two even earlier theaters appearing on the Sanborn Maps, proves that he Circle was at least the fourth movie house opened in Nevada.