The Martha Ellen Auditorium and State Theatre

Colonel William C. Shelton built the Martha Ellen Auditorium in 1916, naming it after his daughter. The Central City Nonpareil declared the building an investment for the spirit of community advancement. One of the stage-left boxes in the theater once functioned as a barbershop.

The building survived the shift from live performance to silent movies. It showed The Birth of a Nation and heavyweight wrestling matches before the rise of the automobile made it harder to keep touring companies on the road. Eventually, it became the State Theatre, and a marquee was added to the facade, obscuring the original Martha Ellen Auditorium sign.

Inside, the horseshoe-shaped balcony is still intact, though the original boxes on the curved proscenium walls have been covered, hiding the rails. The auditorium itself is a windowless space measuring approximately 51 by 56 feet.

Today, the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After closing in 2013 because of the high cost of digital projection equipment, a nonprofit foundation raised 100,000 dollars to renovate and reopen the theater. They used 45,000 of those funds to purchase the new digital projection equipment.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons