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 empire — he owned or leased the Emboyd, the Jefferson, the Palace, and the Strand — and in 1949 his widow, Helen Quimby, commissioned Fort Wayne architect A. M. Strauss to design a new theatre in Quimby Village, the family's shopping center on the Bluffton Road, in her husband's honor and under his name. Strauss was the natural choice: he had designed the Emboyd and the Indiana Hotel a generation earlier, and his office's work — the Lincoln Bank Tower and the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum among it — defined the city's skyline. The Clyde that rose on the southwest side was a mid-century showpiece in its own right: a low, curving buff-brick façade, a streamlined marquee, and above it a huge wedge-shaped blade sign spelling CLYDE in neon. Inside were 1,782 seats, at the time the largest single auditorium in the region.

The movie decades: The Clyde opened on April 19, 1951, and took its place at once as the region's premier movie house, drawing patrons from across northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio to Quimby Village for first-run pictures. It was the flagship of a circuit in transition: the Quimby houses downtown were passing to Chicago's Alliance Amusement Corporation in the early 1950s — the Emboyd and the Indiana Hotel were sold to Alliance in 1952 — and the Clyde outlasted every other house the family had built or run. In its later movie years it was renamed the Quimby Theatre. By the 1980s, as suburban screens multiplied and home video arrived, the big single-screen house languished; it changed names, closed for a time, and reopened briefly as a house of worship. The closing date is carried two ways in the record: the Waynedale News dates the end to 1993, and Indiana Landmarks to 1994, when the theatre "closed for good." Either way, by the early 1990s the Clyde stood vacant, and it stayed vacant for the better part of two decades, its interior stripped toward a shell — the fate that had already taken every other downtown palace but one.

The $500 purchase and the rebirth: In 2012 the percussionist and producer Rick Kinney bought the vacant theatre at a tax sale for five hundred dollars — the purchase and the concert years that followed are told in the Music History leg, in one line here. Kinney, through his Even Keel Event Productions, found his partners in Chuck and Lisa Surack of Sweetwater, and in July 2017 work began on a full renovation of the art-deco house — announced at the groundbreaking as a $5 million project, and put by the venue on completion at $9 million. The fixed seats came out; the shell was restored; Sweetwater supplied the sound and technology design. The Clyde reopened in May 2018 as a 2,150-capacity general-admission concert hall and event center, its 21,000-square-foot main hall standing where the movie seats had been, with the Club Room restaurant next door. The building's fabric is carried in the Architecture and Famous Locations records; its second life as the city's rock room is the Music History leg's. What belongs to this record is the whole arc: the last palace the Quimbys built is the one Fort Wayne movie house of its scale, besides the Embassy, still standing and still in show business.

Sources:

1. Clyde Theatre, "Our History" (clydetheatre.com) — Helen Quimby's 1949 commission to A. M. Strauss, the April 19, 1951 opening, the 1,782 seats, the name change, closing, and brief house-of-worship chapter, the $9 million renovation figure, and the 1808 Bluffton Road address.
2. Indiana Landmarks, "Recapturing Mid-Century Mojo at the Clyde Theatre" (September 29, 2019) — the Strauss design and façade, Clyde Quimby's 1949 commission of the Quimby Village house, the 1980s decline, and the 1994 closing.
3. The Waynedale News, "Ringing of the Bell Begins Rebirth of Clyde Theatre" and "A Dream Becomes Reality at Quimby Village" (August 4, 2017) — the 1993 closing date as the paper gives it, Kinney's 2012 purchase, the July 2017 start of work, and the $5 million project figure announced at the groundbreaking; "Iconic Theater Ready to Shine" (March 30, 2018) — the 1949 plans and 1951 opening.
4. ACGSI, Allen INGenWeb, Q surnames — Clyde Quimby (December 12, 1880 – January 14, 1935), the April 19, 1951 opening in Quimby Village, and the later renaming to the Quimby Theatre; Clyde Theatre, "Our History" — the circuit the theatre memorialized: the Emboyd, Jefferson, Palace, and Strand owned or leased by Clyde Quimby.
5. Music History section of this history — the $500 tax-sale purchase as recorded there, the Surack partnership, Russ Berger acoustics, the May 6, 2018 Pink Droyd reopening concert, and the 140-show count by 2021; crossed here in one line by agreement.