Roxy Theatre
108 W. State Street,
Pendleton,
IN
46064
108 W. State Street,
Pendleton,
IN
46064
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Additional Info
Functions: Cafe
Previous Names: Crescent Theatre, Mars Theatre, Pendleton Theatre
Nearby Theaters
The Crescent Theatre opened its doors by 1914, and by 1922 was renamed the Mars Theatre. It became the Pendleton Theatre the following year in January 1923 following management changes. The Pendleton Theatre was renamed the Roxy Theatre in late-1937.
On December 15, 1947, an unexpected incident happened when the Roxy Theatre’s canopy collapsed just on-time for the movie to end, possibly showing its “The End” card when the collapse happened. This happened at the end of its first showing of “The Foxes of Harrow” just seconds before patrons were set to leave the theatre.
The Roxy Theatre closed for the final time on November 6, 1954 due to the illness of its longtime manager Mr. Alfred McCarty who also operated theatres in Martinsville and Mooresville.
Contributed by
50sSNIPES
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
Street View shows a coffee shop currently at that address. Function should be: Restaurant.
An item about new equipment recently installed in various houses around Indiana appeared in the May 23, 1951 issue of The Exhibitor, and included this: “…A. McCarty, Roxy, Pendleton, Ind., Peerless Magnarc lamps. National 404 rectifiers, Walker high intensity screen, Kollmorgan Snaplite lenses, and Altec Lansing ‘Voice of the Theatre’ speaker system.” This is the only mention of the Roxy I’ve been able to find in the trade journals. I haven’t found the Mars or the Pendleton at all.
But studying the vintage photo, I think we have the wrong address for the theater. The storefront at 106 has only an awning, while the canopy (presumably the one that fell in 1947) is above the entrance of the store next door, at 108. The vertical “Roxy” sign is also attached to that section of the three-bay IOOF building. This pushes the theater’s history back by almost a decade, as the 1914 Sanborn map of Pendleton shows “Motion Pictures” in that storefront, which was at that time numbered 12 W. State Street. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists a house called the Crescent Theatre at 12 W. State Street. Pendleton then also had a house called the Nickel Theatre, but no address was given for it, and it does not appear on the 1914 Sanborn. The Crescent could have opened before 1914, as the IOOF building was built in 1890.
Do you have any information about when the Crescent Theatre became the Mars Theatre?
No, I haven’t found the Mars mentioned in any theater industry trade journals, and I don’t have access other than limited previews to any of the archives that have newspapers from Pendleton. I’ve only found it mentioned there once, in 1922.
Neither can I find an opening year for the Crescent, or whether it had any earlier names. It had to have opened after January, 1908 though, as there is a Sanborn map from that month and it shows a furniture store and funeral parlor in the theater’s location.