This tall, two-story building has a rich history in the commerce and culture of the community. The building has had two lives as expressed in the architecture of its façade, that of a commercial building of the high Victorian Era, and a second life as converted into a movie theater. Both have strongly influenced the design of its façade in different ways.
The building was built on the site which is shown on the 1888 Sanborn Fire Insurance map as the location of a single story, likely wooden, building. In this early photo above, the parapet sign on the top of the new building very clearly reads, “J.M.C. 1890”, almost certainly a reference to the building’s first owner, the Crider family, and the year it was built.
The building was constructed with a façade representing the classic “two-part block” construction of the historic buildings surrounding the Square, a configuration being the most common form for small and moderate-sized commercial buildings in the United States of the era. It essentially divides the façade horizontally, the street level consisting of commercial enterprises and the upper levels devoted to more private uses such as offices, meeting halls or apartments.
The original 1890 façade expressed the high art form of the 19th-Century Commercial Italianate architecture found around the Square. In early photographs, the ground floor looked very much like the façade found across the Square on the 115 Court Street building with exposed red brick, structurally important cast iron front (highly likely locally cast ornate columns with the year 1890 cast into them), large plate glass windows and a recessed store entrance, likely with double doors. It varied from the Court Street design by having a long row of 14 good-sized transom windows just below the belt course.
The second story featured a full plate of Italianate design elements including 6 tall double hung windows with elaborate crown moldings, inlaid brick elements and a large, elaborate cornice featuring corbels, much gable ornamentation in a tall frieze, and a variety of ornate brackets supporting a projecting eave. To cap it off, at the top is the large parapet sign and two metal urn finials at either side of the roofline, like those still found on the William Faull Building at 811 Main Street.
In 1948, the building was converted into a theater, one of the rare non-purpose-built theaters in Oregon. In the conversion process, the ground floor Italianate vertical style frontage was all removed and replaced by a theater marquee front with a simple box-office type entranceway, all in the Art Moderne fashion characterized by a horizonal motif, curved surfaces and glass block. That renovation was remodeled once again in the 1970s to replace the curved walls with a fascia of then popular tan-colored Roman brick.
The upper story was denuded of its more elaborate period character during the theater renovation and sometime after a 1951 fire, the rest of its ornamentation was stripped back to essentially the bare wall, now with an austere, utilitarian upper frontage. This type of modernization was part of a trend throughout the country to eliminate the out-of-fashion fussy architectural elements of the Victorian era, to bring old buildings up to date with the cleaner, more modern aesthetics that evolved in the 20th Century.
Here is a short history of the uses of the building:
Early Furniture Store – Maps back into the 1880s diagram the lot as containing a furniture store, likely in a wooden building. When this new wood frame and brick building was constructed in 1890, it appears to have had that same function, the 1892 Sanborn map listing it as “Furniture” and notes its “iron columns.” The building owner was apparently the Crider family at this point and the furniture store was likely operated by Elmer Hall and Charles Hayes.
Sterling Furniture Company
In 1906. E. V. Dalton, who had been Polk County Treasurer from 1899 to 1904, in association with the Guy brothers (Bert and Newt), bought into the furniture business with Hall and Hayes and together the five formed the Sterling Furniture Company in the Mill Street building. In 1912, the furniture store expanded significantly into the first floor of the adjacent newly built New Scott Hotel Building. In 1913, E.V. bought out Hall and Hayes and shortly thereafter, became the sole owner of the business when the Guy Brothers retired. In 1926, E.V. sold the business to his son Maurice, who operated it at the Mill Street location until 1940 when he purchased the large vehicle storage and repair shop at 519 Main and moved the furniture store to that location where it operated for the next 37 years (site of the current City Library).
Theater Conversion
In the late 1930s, a two-story concrete block building was constructed to the north abutted to the rear of the Mill Street building. In 1941, the Crider family walled off a portion of it for a small theater called the Rio. In 1948, a portion of the 1930s building was combined with the 1890s main building to create one large movie theater, the wall separating these two structures being removed to expand the footprint of the 1890s
building. After the substantial remodel and building conversion, the 350-seat New Rio Theater opened in late 1948 with its internal layout as a late-1940s era theater still evident today.
The Rio Theater and then the larger New Rio Theater (now the Dallas Cinema) have gone through a variety of owners and interior remodels over the years. Throughout these changes, this historic movie theater in all its incarnations is one of the longest continually operating movie theaters in the state of Oregon. It also has the distinction of being one of only two buildings in the community currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
KEY REFERENCES:
- Images of America, Dallas
- City of Dallas Local Landmarks Register
- Library of Congress Sanborn Maps: https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/?q=dallas+oregon
- National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, New Rio Theater, 9/22/22