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Historic place

Midwest Theatre

16 N Harvey Ave, Oklahoma City, OK

A 1,700-seat atmospheric movie palace that hosted world premieres of Black Gold and Cimarron, and is now a parking garage.

📅 1930–1975🏛️ TheaterDemolished
Open on the mapSlide back to 1930

The story

Greek-born John Sinopoulos built the Midwest on Harvey between Main and Sheridan. Cinema Treasures says it opened August 1, 1930, with Richard Barthelmess in The Dawn Patrol. The architect was John Eberson, and it was done in an atmospheric, Spanish Renaissance style with a Wurlitzer organ and about 1,700 seats. On opening night, according to Sinopoulos, the ceiling lights were arranged to blink like stars, and pigeons were released into the auditorium, where they landed on the paintings.

Warner Bros. ran it. The Midwest hosted the 1947 world premiere of Black Gold, with Anthony Quinn appearing in person, and the December 1, 1960 world premiere of Cimarron, starring Glenn Ford. After a stretch of X-rated films it closed in 1975 and was demolished in 1976. A parking garage now occupies the site.

What's There Now

A parking garage occupies the site.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Pigeons were released into the auditorium on opening night.
A family bought some of its lighting fixtures before demolition, and they survive.
Black Gold, a film about an Oklahoma Kentucky Derby winner, premiered here in 1947.

Nearby history

John A. Brown's Department Store

213 W Main St · 131 m away
Oklahoma City's biggest downtown department store spread across a block of Main and Park, and was torn down for a Galler

Globe Life Insurance offices

311 W Grand Ave · 132 m away
Globe Life Insurance Company bought the building in 1953 and kept offices there for 21 years.

Hales Building

201 W Main St · 138 m away
A 12-story bank building that owners fought to save for years was dynamited in 16 seconds, to clear a shopping Galleria

Katz Drug Store

200 W Main St · 146 m away
In August 1958 Clara Luper led Black students to its lunch counter, and by the third day the counter served them.

Warner Theatre (Overholser Opera House / Orpheum)

217 W Grand Ave · 152 m away
It opened as an opera house in 1903, became the Orpheum and then the Warner, and in the 1950s was Oklahoma City's first

Cooper Cinerama Theatre (Liberty Theatre)

19 N Robinson Ave · 181 m away
Opened as the Liberty in 1915, it became the Harber and then the Cooper, where Cinema Treasures says Cinerama and Cinemi

Know something about Midwest Theatre? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?

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Sourceshttps://cinematreasures.org/theaters/12770