Colony Theatre
1204 N. Green Street,
McHenry,
IL
60002
1204 N. Green Street,
McHenry,
IL
60002
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Empire Theatre, Theatre in McHenry
Nearby Theaters
The Empire Theatre was opened on June 28, 1919 with Hazel Daly in “The Little Rowdy” & Fatty Arbuckle in “Fatty and the Broadway Stars”. In January 1929 it was closed for a month to have a Vitaphone sound system installed and reopened on February 29, 1929. In April 1931 it was renamed Theatre in McHenry. In September 1931 it was renamed Colony Theatre. It closed on September 14, 1937 for new equipment to be installed and it reopened two days later. New seats were installed on May 26, 1938. It was destroyed by fire on November 4, 1951 when only the front wall survived.
The McHenry Theatre was built on the site in 1954, opening on February 9, 1955 (it has its own page on Cinema Treasures).
Contributed by
Ken Roe
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Recent comments (view all 1 comments)
Two corrections:
This was NEVER once operated by Warner Bros. Circuit Management Corp. At that exact time, it was independently operated by manager E.W. Johnson. Johnson took over the Empire Theatre after a short closure for a few weeks in September 1933 before reopening on October 8 of that same year.
The Empire Theatre name (sometimes named New Empire Theatre) lasted until April 1941 and was briefly renamed “Theatre in McHenry” until September 1941 when it was renamed the Colony Theatre. It was still named the Empire Theatre in 1931.