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 those years, and the only one on Broadway, then a major commercial strip. It was renamed the Indiana Theatre in 1934 and ran successfully as a neighborhood picture house for nearly six decades under its successive names. The Indiana closed on November 9, 1969 — the Journal Gazette marked the closing — and reopened six weeks later, on December 19, 1969, as Theatre A. In the 1970s the house took its most notorious turn, operating as Cinema Blue, an X-rated theatre; it agreed to close in 1985, ending the building's movie years. The room itself survived: refitted as a jazz club and event hall, it has lived on as the Philmore on Broadway, the last of the 1920s neighborhood houses still standing in something like its original use.

Sources:

1. ACGSI, Allen INGenWeb, P named places (Philmore on Broadway) — the November 5, 1923 opening as one of five neighborhood theatres, the Indiana renaming of 1934, the November 9, 1969 closing, the December 19, 1969 reopening as Theatre A, the Cinema Blue years and the 1985 closing agreement, and the Philmore afterlife; from Cinema Treasures comments citing the News-Sentinel (November 3, 1923) and the Journal Gazette (October 27, 1969).
2. Cinema Treasures, Indiana Theatre — the November 5, 1923 Broadway opening for stage and screen, from contributor comment.