A Rare Find!!! The Napanee Theater - Napanee, Indiana - Vintage Movie Theaters on Waymarking.com

This theater is worth a drive to see if you love old theaters. But let me qualify why. It’s not a grand or fancy place by any means. It is so far from that! What this theater has is even harder yet to find. It's truly rare. Some how an original little small town theater from the 1920's has survived basically untouched. It’s had required maintenance and a few necessary updates but for the most part it’s as it was!

My father used to tell me stories about the theater in his hometown that he would go to and see movies for a dime. He would point out the building to me downtown that it used to be in but I could never figure out how it was ever a theater! It was just another old narrow skinny building stuck in with a dozen others along Main Street. I wondered how it could have ever been a theater, how could you fit a "theater" in a regular old skinny building like that?

For most of my life that question went unanswered. I love old nostalgic places but I could never quite get a picture in my mind of how such a place existed. I always wondered what the place was like that as a child my dad had visited and had so many fond memories of. I wondered until I found this place! One visit here and you will understand. You will know what it was like for your father or grandfather back when they got 25 cents and headed downtown for a movie and popcorn on a Saturday afternoon. You can pretend its 1930 and you just walked in. This place will easily accommodate those dreams.

My first visit was in the mid 1990's, I found the place by accident. The night I arrived they had a little electrical trouble. The concession stand had blown a fuse and the help that night didn’t know how to fix it. Well you can’t have a movie without popcorn so being a handy kind of guy I offered to see what I could do. They pointed me over to the electrical box. I figured how hard can it be to change a fuse. I opened the cover and looked in. It was like nothing I had ever seen in my life! No circuit breakers, no little round fuses you unscrew and replace, just bare copper bars with round copper nuts you hand tighten and old wires wrapped in cloth. Yea, not only was the layout original, so was the infrastructure. Rather than stick my hand into a live electrical box with no fuse like I had ever seen, we opted for running an extension cord over to the concession stand and plugged in what was needed to get by. Then my young daughter and I went and found a seat for the show. It was an excellent evening. The show, the popcorn, and the company were all great.

In the years since the sign has been updated out front but it’s still a lot like it was inside. There is a little balcony upstairs that seats just a few and a narrow isle right down the middle of the main floor with just a few seats on each side. One look in and you can see what your grandfather saw when he was a kid on that Saturday afternoon. That’s what makes this place so rare and special. It is truly worth your time to come and see this place, it really is!



From the web site fiesta5.wikispaces.com:

The Nappanee Theatre was originally known as the Fairy Theatre. The week before the theatre opened, the Nappanee Advance-News spoke highly of its original owner, Guy Loudermilk, stating he "had left nothing undone" when building the new theatre. The theatre opened its doors in 1926 with “Let’s Get Married.” Ticket prices varied, costing ten or fifteen cents to see a show at that time. The theatre also had live shows intermittently, such as the Weidenrgott Radio Girls and Master Phillip Brownsteller. Seating up to 435 people, the theatre maximized its space using the balcony and box seats above.

In 1936, the theatre changed hands but continued to have both movies and live shows. With some remodeling and updating, the theatre stayed open for seven nights a week. A neon sign with the theatre’s name was added to the outside to draw people. Even though the theatre name has been updated to reflect its modern usage, the mosaic tile under and around the box office still bears its original namesake.

The current owners, Bob and Shirley Adams, bought the theatre in 1980. Bob ran the movie projectors as a kid, and was excited to continue the tradition. While running the theatre provides an additional income, it is largely a labor of love.

Year Theater Opened: 1926 Ticket Price (local currency): 4.00 (listed in local currency) Matinee Price (local currency): 4.00 (listed in local currency) Number of Screen(s): 1 Concessions Available: yes Web site: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
Must take a photo of the theater.
Please try to include yourself or gps in the picture.
Tell of your experience at the theater, if it is still a theater. If it is no longer a theater tell of an experience from the past at the theater, if this can be done.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   08/08/2015 DnRseekers visited it 07/12/2012 walkingwildly visited it 07/26/2011 Dulcimoore wrote comment for it

View all visits/logs