. . . Original Englert Theatre Cost $1.5 Million in 2012 Dollars
The original theater building was erected and fixtued at a cost of about $60,000 (equal to $1.5 million in 2012 dollars) by Will (William H., 1874–1920) and Etta Chopek Englert (1883–1952), both already prominent in operating other local businesses—he Englert Ice Co. at 315 Market Street, now a parking lot, and she the trendy and popular Bon Ton Cafe at 24-26 South Dubuque Street, where they lived upstairs. The cafe building now serves as part of the extensively remodeled western Dubuque Street face of the US Bank building.
The new Englert occupied a site that previously served Foster, Graham & Schaffer livery stable, and the adjoining Schaffer Hotel. The livery-hotel property had suffered a major fire during the brief period between the two accompanying images, and had been only minimally restored without rebuilding a huge barn-type stable, and providing a smaller hotel structure, although the new one boasted three levels as opposed to two much longer levels of the fire-destroyed "boarding livery" with its second level sleeping rooms.
The livery often had rented horses to Iowa City firemen to pull their flashy pumper and hose reel fire wagons. These rigs were being housed across Washington Street in the 1881 City Hall, which featured a tall ornamental clocked-belfry. There was no provision for stabling horses in City Hall, although a widely heralded matched pair of white Percherons named Snowball and Highball were stabled in a fire substation along the east face of Linn Street north of Market Street. The old City Hall bell now is displayed a block from the Englert in semi-operating condition in the entryway of the city parking ramp along Linn Street adjacent to the Iowa City-Johnson County Senior Center.
With completion of their new theater building, the Englerts moved around the Dubuque-Washington streets corner from above their Bon Ton Cafe into a spacious apartment home overlooking Washington Street from the second and third floors at the front of their new structure. It was the era of "Ma and Pa" enterprises, and the entrepreneurs often would be found living above their businesses.
Englert Theatre screened the first talkie motion picture displayed in Iowa City on June 9, 1928, of a first run (film) titled The Jazz Singer featuring Al Jolson, the first sound film to be originally presented in that format. It had been premiered in New York City in October 1927, just months ahead of its Englert screening. Early road show movies presented at the Englert such as The Covered Wagon (1923) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film) were accompanied by up to 60-piece orchestras.
Former Iowa City Mayor William C. Hubbard (1966–67) and city councilman (1962–67) who is considered "the father of urban renewal in Iowa City," and a 1943 graduate of Iowa City High School, recalled that after City High was moved into a new building during 1939 Englert Theatre donated a considerable supply of its used stage props and set decorations to the school for use in what subsequently was named Iver Opstad Auditorium in the school. The Englert was managed at that time by Louis and Albert Davis.
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