Time Theater

Joe Vogel on April 25, 2024 at 5:41 pm

A December 15, 2016 article in the Argus Leader newspaper reveals that the Time Theatre closed in May, 1951 when the Minnesota Amusement Co. lost its lease on the building. The lease then went to a Mrs. Cletus Nolte, who operated a millinery shop in the building until it was destroyed by the fire of December 28, 1954. Only the ground floor of the building was rebuilt, and that was demolished following the collapse of the adjacent building in 2016.

The article also says that the Olympia was remodeled and reopened under new management as the Royal Theatre in 1925, and that the Time Theater was in operation by 1937.

A notice that C. [sic] D. Adams planned to open a moving picture Theater in the Greeley Block on South Phillips Avenue was published in the May 22, 1909 issue of Moving Picture World. The Olympia was erroneously listed as the Olympic in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.

SethG on April 18, 2024 at 12:47 pm

This should be listed as demolished. It was probably demolished after the fire. The ugly little one story building on the site of the theater, which used a 130 address, has itself now been demolished. The remainder of the building has had the tacky and awful remodel stripped off, revealing the tile facade. There is a typo in the listing, saying it was the Olympic in 1915. That should be Olympia.

roger on March 8, 2010 at 12:53 am

I recall seeing a newspaper photo of the Time theater after it was gutted by fire. I do not know if it was reopened after the fire but I think not. The current building housing Skelly’s Pub does not match the hight and architecture of the photo of the Olympia theater on the Greetings from Sioux Falls website. I have been in Skelly’s and none of the theater architecture survives. According to a longtime projectionist I knew, the theater was “a shootin' gallery”, a very long and narrow storefront turned movie palace.