Our Past Is Present September 7, 2018

September 7, 2018

            This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society. 

            The late Marilyn Heldstab, one of our former Executive Directors wrote an article for the newspaper in 1991 about some of the early movie theaters in Junction City.  She stated that a headline in the “Junction City Union” newspaper on September 23, 1931 proclaimed that the Cozy Theater was ready to open.  The theater was located at 616 N. Washington Street across the alley from the Bartell Hotel. The movie to be shown was “The Transatlantic” featuring Edmund Howe and Lois Moran.  There were to be two showings.  One was at 7:15 and the other at 9:00 PM.  The price of admission was 20 cents for adults at the matinee and 35 cents for the evening show.  Children would be admitted for 10 cents.

            Movies were certainly not new in Junction City.  The Aurora Theater was located at the same location as the Cozy in 1907. There also was a Lyric Theater at 603 N. Washington Street owned by Ira Bermant and in 1910 the Lyric Air Dome at 118 or 129 E. Sixth Street. 

            On September 24, 1917, the Columbia Theater opened at the corner of 10^th and Washington Streets.  It burned after WWI.  The Uptown Theater opened in 1928.  The seating capacity was 800 and equaled that of the City Theater.  The City Theater was located in what is now the C.L. Hoover Opera House. The Uptown Theater was located at 611 N. Washington Street.  It was later known as the Dickinson Theater and then the Junction Theater.  That building was razed in the fall of 1985. 

            The Kaw Theater opened in 1934.  That building had formerly had a ballroom on the second floor and there was a garage on the main floor.  The night of the opening of that theater, J. Abbie Clarke played the violin to entertain those who came early to admire the theater. 

            After the Municipal Building was finished, the city offices and police and fire departments were moved into that building. The vacated Opera House that was first built in 1882, was converted to a movie theater and opened as the Colonial Theater on July 15, 1941.  It was closed in 1982, when the theater moved into the Westside Shopping Center as a twin theater. 

            And… that is today’s story on “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.