Auditorium
423 E. Main Street,
Marion,
KS
66861
423 E. Main Street,
Marion,
KS
66861
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This theater was constructed in 1905. It was a large building of ‘patent stone’ (concrete blocks made to look like stone). As completed, it was a tall one story structure with square towers at each corner. A generous balcony must have provided for a fairly large capacity. It may have been a city-owned structure.
By 1912, this was showing movies. It is listed in the 1914-15 AMPD The Auditorium was destroyed by fire in 1918. On the 1922 map is a vacant lot.
The historical address was roughly 411-413, but the numbers have shifted. The site today is a nice New Deal post office from 1937.
Contributed by
Seth Gaines
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Recent comments (view all 2 comments)
The Auditorium was still in operation at least as a late as 1916, when the July 8 Motion Picture News ran this item: “Another instance of the power of the serial, ‘Peg o’ the Ring,‘ is the case of the Auditorium theatre, Marion, Kansas, owned by Harry K. Rogers. The Kansas rivers have flooded the town four times in the last two weeks. This worked destruction to Mr. Rogers’ patronage, but when the day for the serial came around the house was crowded. The people came through water to see the picture.”
This Facebook post has a couple of photos of the original Marion City Auditorium. The caption notes that the building was destroyed by a fire in 1918.
A November 13, 1915 Moving Picture World item noted that H. K. Rogers, then operating the Auditorium Theatre, was also the proprietor of the Garden Theatre.