Rex Theatre
517 Market Street,
Steubenville,
OH
43952
517 Market Street,
Steubenville,
OH
43952
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I think I worded my previous comment badly, leading to misunderstandings. The theater added above the market hall (or maybe in a new municipal building that replaced the market hall completely) in 1882 was a rival to Garrett’s Hall, not a new location for it. The online sources for information about theaters in Steubenville are numerous but scattered, contradictory, and often puzzling, but I believe the market hall theater operated as the City Opera House for a few years, and then maybe under another name I haven’t tracked down, and then finally became the Victoria Theatre. It was demolished in the late 1920s, but I don’t know when it closed. I’ve found references to it running Keith vaudeville around 1925, and it usually ran four or five acts, which suggest it was a combination house that also ran movies. It was at 312 Market Street.
Garrett’s Hall was simply renamed Garrett’s Opera House after the new municipally-owned Opera House opened, and remained in the building that dated back to 1829-1830 as Washington Hall and then Kilgore’s Hall and was rebuilt and renamed Garrett’s Hall in 1869-1870. It was renamed Rex Theatre prior to being rebuilt as a ground floor house in 1916. I’m not positive that this venerable structure was the same house that reopened under the Rex name in the 1930s, but it could have been.
A third large house, the 800 seat Theatre Comique, operated in the late 19th century, but it burned in January, 1899, and I’ve found no indication that it was ever rebuilt.
The May 20, 1916 issue ofMoving Picture World had news about the Rex: “The Rex, which recently fell under the ban of the inspectors of the Ohio Industrial Commission, as it was on the second floor, is being extensively remodeled so as to come up to all requirements.”
The fact that the Rex was an upstairs theater reflects its very long history. In 1869, local banker and merchant Horatio Gates Garrett, disappointed that a major touring opera company had skipped over Steubenville because its largest theater lacked adequate stage facilities, bought that theater, then called Kilgore Hall, and rebuilt it as a modern house which he named Garrett’s Hall. The sources are unclear, but Kilgore Hall might have dated to 1829 and opened as Washington Hall.
In 1882, Steubenville had another upstairs opera house built atop the town’s market hall, and after this Garrett’s Hall was renamed Garrett’s Opera House. For a while it was called Gray & Garrett’s Hall, but I haven’t found in which years. By the early 1910s it had become the Rex Theatre. It was one of nine theaters listed at Steubenville in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.