Home Theatre
115-117 Walnut Street,
Eddyville,
IA
52553
115-117 Walnut Street,
Eddyville,
IA
52553
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Opera House, Electric Theatre
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The Opera House was constructed between 1885 and 1893. It was a large auditorium constructed behind some existing buildings.
At some point, movies began to be shown. The 1914-15 American Motion Picture Directory lists an Electric Theatre for Eddyville, which may have been this theater. This theater is listed in 1927. The 1928 listings show a Home Theater with the same capacity.
That theater is still listed in 1931, but by no later than November of that year, this building, and everything to the east of it, had vanished, and a new theater opened on roughly the same site. This was likely due to a fire.
Much of downtown Eddyville has vanished, but the structure was roughly where the newer theater building sits today, although it was wider and quite a bit deeper.
Contributed by
Seth Gaines
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Recent comments (view all 2 comments)
This was Leggett’s Opera House when it appeared in listings as early as 1884, managed by an E. Leggett. It had 250 seats then but later was either expanded or moved to larger quarters and was managed by a John Leggett. The 1912-1913 Cahn guide lists it as a 450-seat, ground floor house managed by L .I. Rowe. In the early 1920s, an Ida B. Rowe of the Opera House, Eddyville, was submitting capsule movie reviews to theater trade journals. A bit of digging reveals that Ida B. Leggett married Lorin I. Rowe in 1893. It looks like Mr. Rowe either became manager of the house and married the boss’s daughter or married the daughter and became manager. The Rowes and the Leggetts were both prominent families in Eddyville.
The 1884 ‘opera house’ is likely the ‘Public Hall’ shown on the 1885 map. It was in the second story of the building labeled ‘Billiards’ in the photo.