Idle Hour Theatre
703 Iowa Avenue,
Dunlap,
IA
51529
703 Iowa Avenue,
Dunlap,
IA
51529
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This theatre appears on the 1913 Sanborn, located in the eastern storefront of a large two story brick commercial building, which was constructed in 1909. It was still open in 1926.
The building was a grocery store for many years, and today is used as the headquarters of a local cattle operation.
Contributed by
Seth Gaines
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Recent comments (view all 3 comments)
If this theater was still open in 1926, it was the Idle Hour. The 1930 map is unavailable online, which makes it hard to say.
This PDF file is about the building at 701-703 Iowa Avenue in Dunlap, which was indeed the location of the Idle Hour Theatre during the 1920s into the 1940s. The document has quite a few newspaper clippings about the theater, including one with a photo of the front. There are also a couple of non-clipping photos which show the original arched front of the theater portion of the building.
The building, erected in 1909, housed a furniture store on the ground floor of the two-story section for more than half a century, but the document doesn’t say when the theater opened. One reminiscence says that the theater closed for a while and was occupied by a bowling alley, but in the early 1920s the bowling alley moved into the second floor above the furniture store, where there had been a dance hall, and the theater was restored.
The document doesn’t give the closing date of the theater either, though it indicates that in the 1950s the theater’s space came to be occupied by a business called Gorham Motors. The last reference that is probably to the Idle Hour Theatre I’ve found in trade journals is from the September 3, 1949 Boxoffice, which simply says “John Broaderick, exhibitor at Dunlap, Iowa, is vacationing.”
The addition on the side, which appears to have become the theater at some point, did not exist in 1913. It also appears from some of the pictures that this was Beck’s Theatre initially. The address for that portion would have been 705. That part of the building has been very badly preserved, and is covered in cheap plywood paneling and a garage door.