Photoplay Theatre

Joe Vogel on August 5, 2025 at 8:06 pm

65 Park Street is a Colonial Revival building originally built in 1883 as a town hall to house local government offices, the District Court, the State Registrar of Deeds and an auditorium. The Registrar of Deeds still occupies the building, so its current use can be classified as State (or Government) Offices.

The structure originally had a peaked roof, but that and the original tower were destroyed by a 1949 fire. As peaked roofs are not a feature of Colonial Revival architecture, it was likely built in the Romanesque Revival style and the Colonial features added as part of the post-fire rebuilding. I’ve been unable to find a photo of the building dating from the era when it housed the theater.

The theater obviously must have occupied the auditorium, but I don’t know if that space is still intact. It might have been carved up for more office space. It was not unusual in the silent movie era for local governments to lease underutilized public auditoriums to theater operators to get a bit of extra revenue, but in later years the spaces were frequently just converted for other uses.

The most recent Sanborn map of Adams, from 1914, shows the Town Hall but doesn’t indicate a theater operating in the building. The moly movie house on the map was the old Atlas Theatre on the site of the later Adams Theatre. The Photoplay Theatre was in operation by 1921, when it was advertised in the January 11 issue of the local newspaper.