Cozy Theater

Joe Vogel on November 26, 2017 at 10:21 pm

The January 22, 1908, issue of The Junction City Union said that the tinners who had been putting the decorative finishes on the new Aurora Theatre had moved on to Topeka to work on a theater of the same name there.

I’ve seen ads for both the Aurora and the Cozy in the Union as early as May, 1913, (the original Cozy most likely opened on May 10, and was at 625 N. Washington) and continuing into 1917. The Aurora often featured live events during this period, but the Cozy ran movies most of the time, though it too had live theater sometimes.

The town also had an Airdome, operated during the summer months. In 1914 the Airdome was taken over from the Aurora Theatre by the operators of the Cozy, according to the April 9 issue of the Union.

The October 16, 1918, issue of the Union had an article about the rebuilt Cozy Theatre, the opening of which had been delayed by a quarantine, probably imposed due to the Spanish Influenza epidemic. The Aurora had been renamed the Cozy in 1917 (change noted in the August 2 issue of the Union), around the time the new Columbia Theatre was opened.

Junction City had an earlier movie house, the Lyric Theatre, opened in March, 1907, at 603 N. Washington, but it appears to have closed not long after the first Cozy opened.