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Fort Wayne's theatre record begins with a hall, not a palace: Colerick's Hall, opened on Columbia Street on 20 December 1853 and by the News's 1907 account of city firsts the town's first theatre, later White's Opera House. The standing playhouse of the next century was the Majestic on East Berry Street, opened 24 October 1904 with eight hundred seats, the room where the city's permanent companies took root. Vaudeville had the Lyric on South Calhoun from 1908, one house under three names as the audience's tastes changed, and the Wayne Street corner cycled through Empress, Strand and Shirley in twenty-four years. The section closes with the Clyde on Bluffton Road, the last and largest of the Quimby circuit, built in 1949 by a widow as her husband's memorial and designed by A. M. Strauss: a movie palace raised like a monument, which in Fort Wayne it was.
The Clyde Theatre: the Quimby memorial and the region's premier movie house
Opened April 19, 1951 — closed in the 1990s — reopened May 2018
A theatre built as a memorial: The Clyde Theatre at 1808 Bluffton Road was the last and largest house of the Quimby circuit, and it was a widow's monument. W. Clyde Quimby (1880–1935) had assembled Fort Wayne's first theatre…
Before the palaces: halls, opera houses, and the Temple Theatre
1853 — 1923
The legitimate stage, in brief: Fort Wayne's theatre record begins with a hall, not a palace. Colerick's Hall, erected by E. F. Colerick in 1853 on the north side of Columbia Street between Clinton and Barr and opened on December…
The Majestic Theatre: the Berry Street playhouse
Opened October 24, 1904 — demolished 1957
The city's turn-of-the-century playhouse: The Majestic Theatre at 216 East Berry Street opened on October 24, 1904, to an excited public, in the years when live theatre was still the nation's main dramatic entertainment. An…
The Lyric: vaudeville, burlesque, and the Wayne — one house, three names
Opened October 12, 1908 — closed by 1956
The Calhoun Street house: The Lyric Theatre opened on October 12, 1908, at 1014 South Calhoun Street — the Lyric Theatre Building, 1012–1016 Calhoun in the 1923 city directory — as a house for vaudeville acts and movies…
The Empress, the Strand, and the Shirley: the Wayne Street corner house
Opened March 9, 1913 — demolished 1937
Three names in twenty-four years: At the southwest corner of East Wayne and Clinton streets — 134 East Wayne — stood the shortest-lived of the downtown houses. It opened in the fall of 1912 by one local account, on March 9, 1913…
The Jefferson Theatre: the house that turned around
Built 1912, opened February 8, 1913 — closed 1978
The first picture palace: The Jefferson was Fort Wayne's first theatre built for the movies on a palace scale. Contracts for its construction were let in November 1912 — the Journal-Gazette of November 17, 1912, reported the…
The Palace Theatre: the vaudeville palace that became the Civic's home
Dedicated January 25, 1915 — the Civic Theatre's house 1957–1969
"One of the most beautiful playhouses in the middle west": The Palace Theatre, at 126 East Washington Boulevard at the corner of Clinton Street, was dedicated on January 25, 1915. It cost $200,000 to build, seated 1,700, and was…
The Embassy: the palace that survived
Opened May 14, 1928, as the Emboyd
Cross-reference: The Emboyd — opened May 14, 1928, by W. Clyde Quimby, renamed the Embassy on its sale to Alliance Amusement in 1952, a movie palace until the theatre went dark in the early 1970s, and saved from demolition by the Embassy Theatre Foundation — is carried in the Arts section as the city's big stage and in the Architecture and Famous Locations records as a building; it is cross-referenced here in this one line so that this section remains the buildings' record without duplicating theirs.
Sources:
- Arts section of this history, "The Embassy as a stage" — the 1928 Emboyd opening, the 1952 sale and renaming, the 1972 rescue, and the Broadway years, from the Embassy Theatre's own history; the movie-palace years are told there and in Famous Landmarks.
The Paramount Theatre: the last downtown palace built
Opened October 3, 1930 — closed July 13, 1961 — demolished 1962
A palace for the talkies: The Paramount Theatre at 121 East Wayne Street was the last of Fort Wayne's great downtown houses and, with the Emboyd, one of the two largest and most ornate ever built in the city. The News-Sentinel…
The Broadway: the neighborhood house that outlived its names
Opened November 5, 1923 — movies ended 1985
One of the five: The Broadway Theatre at 2441 Broadway opened on November 5, 1923, for both stage and screen events — the News-Sentinel carried the new house that week — as one of five neighborhood theatres built in Fort Wayne in…
The Rialto Theatre: the South Calhoun neighborhood palace
Opened August 20, 1924 — closed 1989
The candy maker's theatre: The Rialto Theatre at 2616 South Calhoun Street was built in 1924 for $150,000 by James Heliotes, who also operated a candy factory in Fort Wayne, and its grand opening came at 1 p.m. on August 20…
The Maumee Theatre: the east side's picture house
Opened 1930 — closed 1955
A short, ordinary, complete record: The Maumee Theatre at 1121 Maumee Avenue opened in 1930 with 590 seats and was operated by Premiere Theatres. It was the east side's neighborhood house for a quarter-century — the walk-to…
The small houses: the rest of the roll
1900s — 1990s
Names the listings keep: Below the palaces and the named neighborhood houses stood a roll of small rooms that the surviving record holds more thinly. Cinema Treasures' Fort Wayne listings — thirty-six closed houses in all …
The drive-ins, I: the 1939 experiment and the Fort Wayne Drive-In
1939 — 1985
Fort Wayne's first drive-in, 1939: The drive-in came to Fort Wayne before the war. The trade press announced it in June 1939 — "A new drive-in theatre has been opened in Fort Wayne, Ind., by Roy Gordon, managing director of Allen…
The drive-ins, II: East 30, Hillcrest, Lincolndale, and the end of the outdoor era
1950 — 1991
Three more screens under the sky: The East 30 Drive-In, at 7500 SR-930 East on the old U.S. 30 toward New Haven, opened on October 6, 1950, with Randolph Scott in The Nevadan; it was opened by Carl H. Schwyn, and by 1953 it was…
The Holiday houses: Northcrest's twin and six-plex
1966 — 2005
The best room in town, by many accounts: Fort Wayne's Holiday was not a drive-in, as local memory sometimes makes it — it was the indoor house at the Northcrest Shopping Center, and for two decades it was, by the testimony…
The multiplex era, in brief
1970s — 2022
Twins, mall houses, and stadium screens: After the Holiday showed the way, Fort Wayne's screens multiplied and shrank. The mall and strip years brought the twins and triples the listings keep — the Northwood Park 1 & 2 (opened by…
Cinema Center and the Spectator: the art-house thread
1976 — present
Film as art, kept alive by hand: One Fort Wayne movie institution was never a building at all, at first. Before it stood the Spectator Theater, the city's last art and specialty movie house, on The Landing; when the Spectator…