Pictureland Theatre

Five theatres once served patrons in “The Harbor” – the Indiana Harbor section of East Chicago, IN. Each was a stone’s throw from its neighbor – one on Guthrie Street, the other four nearby on Michigan Avenue. In the same vicinity, the Auditorium Theatre served as both a theatre and general-purpose venue. All six buildings are depicted in the 1915 Sanborn Maps. None of them stand today.

The storefront Pictureland Theatre offered moving pictures at 3342 Michigan Avenue, a location three doors southwest of Pennsylvania Avenue adjacent to the Julius Cohen mens’ furnishings store. It was advertising as a five-cent theatre and “The Home of Western Drama” in August 1910. The building sold for $10,000 the following month but the Pictureland Theatre had a long lease of the premises.

In November 1915 Julius Nassau, A. Engel and Nick Doicha acquired all five Harbor movie theaters – the Columbia, Family, Pictureland, Gem and Liberty – with plans to close the Pictureland, Gem and Liberty; drop vaudeville from the three theaters that offered it; focus on the Columbia Theatre and Family Theatre, and raise prices from five cents to the 10-to-15 cent range.

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