Theater
| Orpheum Theatre and Site | |
| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
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| Location: | 405 Main St., Dubuque, Iowa |
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| Coordinates: | 42°29′52″N 90°39′55″W / 42.49778°N 90.66528°W / 42.49778; -90.66528Coordinates: 42°29′52″N 90°39′55″W / 42.49778°N 90.66528°W / 42.49778; -90.66528 |
| Built: | 1910 |
| Architect: | Rapp and Rapp |
| Governing body: | Local |
| NRHP Reference#: | 72000474 |
| Added to NRHP: | November 14, 1972 |
The Five Flags Theater was constructed as the Majestic Theater in 1910, replacing a theatre originally built in 1864, that was destroyed by fire that year. It had been purchased then renovated by local prominent businessman Harker Brentnal Spensley, Sr. and his partner, C. H. Eighmey. The rebuilt theater was designed by George L. Rapp, who eventually became one of the nation's premier theater architects. It was converted to a movie house in 1920 and renamed 'Spensley Theater' in 1929. Constructed in a Renaissance Revival style with French influences, it was later renamed the RKO Orpheum and used to show movies. Eventually, it fell into disrepair and was slated for demolition during urban renewal in 1969.
A committee made up of concerned citizens began a fund drive to save the theater, which was incorporated in the Five Flags Center project in 1972. Restoration was begun in 1975, and the theater was reopened in 1976 as the Five Flags Theater. It is currently the home of the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra, high school musicals, and occasional concerts and ballet productions.
Read more about this topic: Five Flags Center
Famous quotes containing the word theater:
“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)
“I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“The primary function of a theater is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent.”
—Robert Brustein (b. 1927)