Broadway Theatre, Cape Girardeau

The Broadway Theatre opened in Cape Girardeau in nineteen twenty-one as a vaudeville and silent-film house, part of the wave of ornate neighborhood theaters that mid-sized American cities built in the early twentieth century to give working-class audiences a taste of grand architecture at a nickel a seat. It went through the full arc of the American movie palace: talkies, the golden age of Hollywood, suburban competition, closure for good in nineteen ninety-seven, and a rescue from demolition in the early twenty twenties. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property to the downtown historic district, the Broadway survived because enough people in Cape Girardeau decided that what the theater represented, the idea that a Mississippi River town deserved a beautiful public room, was worth keeping. Today the building is being redeveloped for retail and residential space.