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Original murals restored, reinstalled at Sioux City’s Orpheum
posted by
CSWalczak
on
November 20, 2009 at 7:50 am
SIOUX CITY, SD — Two original murals dating from the Orpheum’s opening in 1917 have been restored and now grace again the walls of this theater that was home to vaudeville and movies. Three others are undergoing restoration and will be installed later, although the location of two others is unknown.
The dancing Grecian ladies in the murals at the Orpheum Theater recently became more vivid, even as their history remains a cloudy mystery.
After a yearlong, $40,000 restoration project, two murals original to the 1913 building were reinstalled this week, without the almost 100 years of grime.
“We are very excited to have these murals back in the building safe, sound and restored,” said Russ DeCurtins, the general manager for SMG, the company that has managed the theater for the city since 2003.
The full story is in the Argus Leader.
Comments (2)
The history of this theater seems garbled. The article says it opened in 1913, but the Cinema Treasures page and the theater’s own web site say 1927. The National Register of Historic Places description says that 1927 was a significant year for it, but has 1900-24 as a period of significance for the building—hard for it to be significant if it doesn’t exist. Others say there’s evidence of a Rapp & Rapp theater in Sioux City built in 1917. Can anyone reconcile all this?
I think that this article refers to the Orpheum in Sioux Falls, SD rather than the Orpheum in Sioux City, IA. The paper linked is from Sioux Falls. This would seem to reconcile the problem with the dates.