Empress Theatre (Magna, Utah)
Utah
A copper-mining town's 1916 movie house is run today by more than three hundred volunteers, and it's the only building in Magna on the National Register.
The Empress Theatre went up on Main Street in Magna in 1916, built by the Western Theatre Corporation to give the town's mine workers somewhere to go at night. It wasn't even the first. A place called the Palace opened in 1914 and closed in 1917, and nobody today knows where it stood. The Empress outlasted it by more than a century. Its front mixes Neo-classical and Beaux Arts detailing, which makes it the most elaborate piece of architecture in a town of plain brick storefronts. In 1985 it went onto the National Register of Historic Places, the only building in Magna to earn that. It runs now on more than three hundred volunteers from around the Salt Lake Valley, with operating costs covered entirely by grants and donations. Eight to ten shows a year. And every summer, kids aged six to eighteen mount a full musical with three weeks of rehearsal.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
Day-to-day operations are fulfilled by a group of more than 300 volunteers from around the Salt Lake Valley.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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