Waldo Theatre

101 S. 4th Street,
Union Star, MO 64494

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dallasmovietheaters
dallasmovietheaters on January 10, 2018 at 12:29 pm

The DeKalb County Historical Society fills in some blanks here. The Waldo Opera House was built in 1908. The Opera House / Waldo Theatre was on the upper floor with Beaty Grocery on the main floor. The address would be 101-5 South 4th Street at Cedar. High school graduations took place there from 1909-1930. Long after its usefulness, the building collapsed in the 1990s and its remnants removed.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on November 20, 2017 at 6:15 pm

According to a 1990 survey form for the Missouri Office of Historic Preservation, the Waldo Opera House was upstairs in a two-story brick building erected in 1908 at the corner of 4th and Cedar Streets, across Cedar Street from the City Hall and a bank.

Today there are no old buildings directly on the corners of that intersection, so it appears that the Waldo Theatre is gone. The upper floor was abandoned in the 1950s due to safety issues with the stairway, and the ground floor was vacated around 1975. The building fell into decay due to weather and vandalism, but was still recommended as a potential candidate for preservation in 1990. Now it isn’t even possible to tell which corner of the intersection the vanished building was on.