Movie Theater Memories

By Jerry Benedict In some ways, my life began with movie theaters, specifically the Missouri Theatre. Like the Missouri Theatre, my story starts in 1927. My mom had been attending Columbia High School (now the Jefferson Middle School building). At that time, it operated as the only public 10-12th grades school for nonminority students. Then…

Bungalows and local couple celebrated for historic preservation

The bungalow-studded neighborhood on Hubbell Drive and Lucy and Hugo Vianello will be celebrated at a free event set for 6:30 p.m. May 11, 2015, to highlight historic preservation in Columbia, Missouri. The event, sponsored by Columbia’s Historic Preservation Commission, will be held in the historic Missouri Theatre — the building that Hugo and Vianello…

Do you think Columbia is an architectural wasteland?

William Bernoudy – student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Eero Saarinen – architect of the St. Louis Gateway Arch. Boller Brothers and an Paris opera. These are just a few of the names and reasons cited to dispel the idea that Columbia, Missouri is an architectural wasteland. In case you missed this article by Morgan McCarty in…

Four easy ways to help shape history

Shaping history comes in, well, all shapes and sizes. Here are four ways to help shape Columbia’s history. 1. A Saturday, June 1, 2013 concert will let you hear history — and help to preserve and discover it. A second J.W. “Blind” Boone piano has been discovered. Boone was a classical and ragtime musician who…

Historic buildings uses, owners change

The Missouri Theatre opened in 1928 and initially performances included music, a newsreel, cartoon, dancing and a feature film. Then, over the years, the theatre’s functions changed, featuring only films for a time, then it nearly faced destruction in the 1980s. This Sept. 11, 2011 article in the Columbia Daily Tribune outlines the many changes…

Missouri Theatre to be leased by University of Missouri-Columbia

Deb Sheals, a historic preservation consultant, said it best: Saving a historic building requires putting it to work. Now, the Missouri Theatre will be put to work by the University of Missouri. This article by the Columbia Daily Tribune notes that the manager of MU’s Jesse Hall plans to put the Missouri Theatre to work….

Missouri Theatre’s new leader

Commitment. Optimism. Hope for the 1,100-seat beauty that is the Missouri Theatre. That’s what I read in the Jan. 30, 2011 article by Lynn Israel in the Columbia Daily Tribune, which quoted Carole Sue DeLaite, new co-president of the Missouri Symphony Society board. Plans continue to be “made to keep the stage filled,” the article…