Plaza Theater
330 N. Pearce Street,
Sioux City,
IA
51101
330 N. Pearce Street,
Sioux City,
IA
51101
1 person
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Nearby Theaters
The Plaza Theater was located on North Pierce Street, and opened on May 18, 1916 with Beatrice Michelena in “The Unwritten Law”. It was a conversion of a former wholesale liquor house. It had gone from listings by 1930.
It had no connection with the Plaza Theatres 1 & 2 that opened in the 1990’s (It has its own page on Cinema Treasures).
Contributed by
Billy Holcomb / Billy Smith / Don Lewis
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater.
Recent comments (view all 7 comments)
The Plaza Theatre was in operation by 1919, when it was mentioned in The Moving Picture World.
The Plaza can be seen at the top left in this photo montage of old historic theaters in Sioux Falls.
From the late 1920s a postcard view of the Plaza along with a busy Pearce Street.
The Plaza Theatre opened in 1916. Here is an announcement from the January 8 issue of The Moving Picture World that year:
The November 20, 1915, issue of The Music Trade Review had an item about this theater:
The Selzer Building was under construction when it was mentioned in the December, 1905, issue of Engineering Review, so was probably completed in early 1906. It was built for Charles Selzer, son of Rudolph Selzer, a Hessian immigrant who had established Sioux City’s first brewery in 1860.I don’t know how much the exterior of the Selzer Building was altered in the conversion to a theater (probably very little,) but according to the records of the American Terra Cotta and Ceramic Company the original architect of the 1905 structure was Henry Fisher. I’ve been unable to discover the architect for the 1915-1916 conversion, but it would not have been Fisher, who retired in 1909.
Surprisingly, even without an address to work with Google Maps has put the pin icon for this theater almost exactly at its actual location. The seven-story building prominent in the vintage postcard Don Lewis provided is still standing at the northeast corner of Pierce and 4th Street, and the Theatre was in the second building south of 4th on the same side of Pierce. This block is now mostly parking lot, so we can mark the Plaza Theatre as demolished.
The Plaza Theatre would have been roughly across the street from the entrance of the modern Great Southern Bank building which uses the address 329 N.Pierce, so the theater’s address would probably have been approximately 330 N. Pierce (Google street view estimates the location as 351, but of course it exaggerates.)
The Plaza theatre opened on May 18th, 1916. Grand opening ad posted.
Here is an item about the proposed Plaza Theatre from Moving Picture World of November 6, 1915: “SIOUX CITY GETS A PLAZA THEATER.
“The Plaza Theater Company, of Waterloo, Iowa, has taken a ten-year lease on a site in Pierce street, Sioux City, Iowa, upon which it will build a moving picture theater with a seating capacity of 1,200. The exterior dimensions of the new theater are to be 50 by 150 feet. It is estimated that $40,000 will be expended, and the name of the structure will be the Plaza. The entrance will be composed of a half dozen arched doorways, built of terra cotta. The front of the building will be of enameled brick. There will be a large lobby, and all the conveniences of the modern motion picture theater will be installed. A big pipe organ will be used. Work will be begun in a few months, and the theater is expected to be opened by March of next year. J. E. Bryant, assisted by St. Elmo Bateman, will be in charge of the projected Plaza.”