The Colfax Theatre

213 W. Colfax Avenue · opened August 1928 · closed 1977 · demolished in the early 1990s; the South Bend Tribune's offices stand on the site

The sound house. The Colfax Theatre, mid-block on Colfax Avenue between Lafayette and Main, opened in August 1928 — the Historic Structures report gives August 4, the History Museum's local-history account August 5; both stand — built by the H. G. Christman Company for $500,000 in the Spanish Baroque manner, with 2,000 seats in the National Register nomination's count and 2,100 in the museum's. Its claim on the record is technological and contemporary: it was advertised in the local papers of its opening as the first theatre in the United States — "and thereby in the world," the billing ran — to offer a program consisting of sound pictures, Vitaphone and Movietone, from start to finish. The museum's plainer version is that the Colfax was one of the first movie houses in the country built for sound films, and the first in St. Joseph County to show them. It was the house that made the Blackstone's silent regime untenable, and it took its part in the city's great theatre night a dozen years later: the Colfax and the city's other theatres joined the events around the October 4, 1940 world premiere of Knute Rockne: All American at the Palace.

The Colfax played first-run films downtown for five decades. A $200,000 renovation in 1957 — the largest single reinvestment in any of the downtown houses in the record — carried it into the television age; it closed "temporarily" in 1977 and never reopened, the same year the State ended its movie life, the downtown picture business collapsing to nothing within one season. Fundraising to save it failed. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 1985, and delisted on July 7, 1993, its physical integrity failing; the demolition year itself is carried differently in the accounts reached — 1991 in the encyclopedic record, the early 1990s in the theatre record (its owners unable to purchase insurance), 1994 in the museum's account — and prints here as that range. The South Bend Tribune's expansion occupies the site; the newspaper that advertised its opening bills now prints from its ground.

Sources

1. Historic Structures report, Colfax Theatre (Indiana Landmarks) — the Christman construction, the $500,000 cost, the floor split of 1,600 and 400 seats, the first-sound-program billing, the 1940 premiere participation.
2. The History Museum, Michiana Chronicles local history — the August 5, 1928 opening, 2,100 seats, the built-for-sound distinction, demolition carried as 1994.
3. Cinema Treasures, Colfax Theatre — the August 4, 1928 opening date, the 1957 renovation, the 1977 closing, the insurance account of the demolition.
4. National Register records — listing June 5, 1985; delisting July 7, 1993; demolition carried as 1991.