Wallacedale Theatre
16219 Main Ridge Road,
Tangier Island,
VA
23440
16219 Main Ridge Road,
Tangier Island,
VA
23440
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This theatre opened as the Wallacedale Theatre in 1921. It took up part of a large grocery store. It was closed in 1936 and was demolished in the 1940’s.
Contributed by
Chuck
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
From an application for the National Registry for Tangier Island
The J. E. Wallace & Co. Store was established by John Wallace (1855-1926) who came to Tangier in the 1870s. The largest store on the island, according to an old photo, it was a late-nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century, frame, hippedroofedbuilding with a long front porch.
It sold groceries, general merchandise, and coffins as Wallace was also an undertaker and had a “coffin house” as an adjacent building on the property.
After his father’s retirement in 1921, Sidney S. Wallace opened the Wallacedale Theatre, the island’s first movie house, after constructing a stage, seats, and booths and installing a projector at the western end of the store.
The Wallacedale closed shortly after Wallace’s death in 1936 and it was torn down in the 1940s.
Another theatre known as The Grand located across from the
Methodist Church continued to show movies until around 1960; it was demolished shortly thereafter.
I won’t swear to the address being correct, given the source, but the map is way off. There is a Main Ridge Rd, and 16215 is the museum, so 16219 is at least plausible, although the location would not fit such a large building as is described.
The picture should be thrown away.
Looking at streetview, what I think is today 16219 is a small older house which likely is from the 1920’s at the latest. It is possible that the museum building is located where the theater was. It’s hard to tell how old that is. At any rate, the map will need to be adjusted. I think the problem is that the map we are using has the wrong name for the street (calls it W Ridge Rd, which makes no sense since it runs N-S). If the Grand really was directly across from the church, the location must have been where the old grey/green house is. That style looks ‘40s or '50s, but could date to the early '60s. That site is well north of this theater. Someone with better information will hopefully create a listing.