Marshall Public Library (Marshall, IL)

Strand Theater
The building at 503-507 Locust Street that housed the Strand Theater was built in 1901 as the Knights of Pythius lodge hall and included a vaudeville theater called the Pythian Theater that featured visiting troupes of entertainers. The lodge was on the upper two floors. The ground floor theater entrance and lobby faced Locust Street and was flanked on each side by offices. The auditorium, balcony, and stage were at the back of the building facing south. In 1930 the theater was converted in order to show moving pictures, and a contest was held in 1943 to choose a new name. The Strand was the winner. The first movies that were shown were silent. Several local pianists including Helen Coldren (later Helen Moore) were employed to play along with the films.
The building housing the Strand Theater was destroyed by fire late at night on July 22, 1957, and a new K P Lodge building, minus the movie theater, was erected on the same corner a year later.

Paul Paddock, 4th & Archer looking east
What a neat photo . . the old tanker truck, the proud looking young man, and the Claypool & Son building in the background. When we began researching this photo, the name was a great place to begin. A search of our newspaper archive quickly revealed a sad story for this young man.
Paul Paddock was born in April 1903 and grew up in Darwin. In 1926, he was living in Marshall - rooming at Clay Montgomery's boarding house on Locust Street and driving a tanker truck for H.B. O'Hair. On the morning of December 22, 1926, he had breakfast at the boarding house and headed to work. When he returned to O'Hair's filling station after a run in his truck, he was not looking well and was talked into returning to the boarding house. There he fell terrible ill and passed away suddenly. Paul was only 23 years old. He was laid to rest at Darwin Cemetery.

Aces softball team in 1940. They are shown in front of the Strand movie theater on the southeast corner of 5th and Locust Streets in Marshall. We are looking for more information about the name of the team. In the Marshall Public Library newspaper archives the team is listed as the Endicott Aces. But we have not been able to find any other articles in the archives directly connecting Mr. Endicott with the Strand Theater or the Aces team. There are, however, two mentions of him giving theater passes (no particular theater named) as prizes to a group of girls who had raised money for the blind at a flower show in 1938.

When we received this photograph there were names of the players that were in the picture on the back. We are hoping that some of the descendants of these players can help us connect the name of the team to the Strand Theater or provide any other information about the team.

The players’ names as printed are:

Front (l to r) Emer [sic] Haugh, Don Able, Everett English, Leon Cooper, Raymond (Bud) Abel, Bill Bubeck

Back (l to r) Charles Macke, Charles (Jr.) Haugh, Leroy (Shorty) Garner [sic], Lauf Forsythe, Dean English, Don Smitley, and Jim Stepp.

We believe that the two misspelled names should be Eamer Haugh and Shorty Gardner.