Auburn Avenue Theater’s Last Act and New Beginnings
by Jonathan Glover, City of Auburn Communications Manager
When Connie Henke was 12 years old, she saw a movie in a room that no longer exists. Its walls are now pulp, the floor an even spread of gravel, the stage a pile of rubble.
Only the bricks remain — alongside the memories. Those are going to last, foundation or otherwise. Most certainly the ones about James Bond and the antics of prepubescence.
“Boys would take their straws and pea shooters and sit in the back row, blow them at the back of girl’s heads,” Connie reminisces. She’s been doing that a lot lately, quietly or boisterously, in a weekly walk and talk group she started years ago. So many memories stacked neatly into four walls that came down one day; they need to be shared. Like the one when she saw her first movie — 007’s Dr. No. “Auburn Avenue was a destination,” she continues,” it was cool to go to the movies. To feel like a grownup.”
For Connie and many like her, this fall’s happenings in downtown Auburn have been bittersweet. On Wednesday, Oct. 23, at about 2 p.m., the front façade of the Auburn Avenue Theater, an icon of downtown of Auburn for nearly 100 years, came crashing to the ground. The rest soon followed.
It was a projected demolition years in the making, but that doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier. After the building was essentially condemned in late 2021 when a fire ravaged the Max House Apartments next door a year earlier, inspectors deemed the theater unsafe to occupy.
So, for years it sat vacant, a literal shell of what it once was. And oh, what it once was. A bus depot, a movie theater, a dinner theater, a proper stage theater, and a repository of nostalgia. Depending on who you ask, it was a center of burgeoning romance — who doesn’t remember their first kiss? For others, it was their introduction to drama and thespians. And to all, fan or critic, a dominant landmark. A piece of history.
But today, it’s an empty lot — for now. Because what’s next is more than a matinee. It’s the real premiere.
“Spaces for Arts and Entertainment and Community gathering are essential to a vibrant downtown,” says Parks, Arts and Recreation Director Daryl Faber. “The combination of a new theater, downtown park as well as the recently opened, award winning Postmark Center for the Arts will serve as catalyst projects in what will be a reenergized downtown. These projects will benefit businesses, entertain patrons, as well as provide a home for those who have passion for the performing and visual arts.”
Fast Times at Auburn Ave.
In the way, way back, Auburn Avenue Theater wasn’t much of a show stealer. In fact, it wasn’t much of a destination at all. When it was built in 1926, the building at 10 Auburn Ave. was known as the Auburn depot of the North Coast Lines, a “bus” company that promised luxury motor coach travel between Portland, Tacoma and Seattle. When the interurban railway closed in 1928, the depot sat idle, until the early 1940s, when then-owner Jimmy and Laura Ewing supervised its transformation into a movie theater.
After piles of sound and screen equipment were purchased, a sloped floor installed, and a foyer built atop the whispers of a former entry tunnel, the 500-seat theater was open for business on Nov. 24, 1943. It’s first feature — “My Friend Flicka,” a tried-and-true story of a boy and his horse.
In 1947, the Ewings sold the Auburn Avenue Theater to Henry W. Mullendore, whose first order of business was installing a marquee — a prominent and eye-catching feature the theater still lacked. By the 1950s and ’60s, Auburn’s other downtown theaters had closed, and the Avenue was the only show in town — and the only theater in the region screening Saturday matinees.
“It was a survivor,” says Hilary Pittenger, Curator of Collections Specialist at the White River Valley Museum. “It just lasted, both as a building, and as a building being used as a theater. Just simply standing for that long, it’s a really important way that things become a part of our culture.”
Being one of a kind meant just about every Auburn resident, young and old, saw a film at the Auburn Avenue Theater, especially on Saturdays. Mayor Nancy Backus recalls Henry Mullendore — to them Mr. Mullendore — coming out to the stage before each showing. He’d introduce the movie and most importantly, remind folks to remain courteous during the show. That meant no talking and no goofing around — especially the kind that involves shooting a spit ball through a straw.
“I remember being at that theater almost every weekend — or at least when a new movie would come out,” Mayor Backus says. “I watched Gene Wilder in ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ on the big screen, and was mesmerized!”
Mayor Backus remembers during one screening, feeling a tug on the back of her hair. When she checked during intermission, she found a giant wad of gum. She left the theater crying, which caught the attention of Mr. Mullendore.
“I showed him what had happened. He went over to the boys sitting behind me and kicked them out of the theater with a very stern voice and message,” Mayor Backus says. “He then asked someone to get a cup of ice from concessions, and he proceeded to help me ice down the gum and get it out of my hair without any need to cut it. He was a man of many talents!”
It wasn’t just the love of cinema or the Mullendores that kept families coming back. Parents across the valley would drop their kids at the door, shop around town, or steal a few hours to have a stiff drink next door. When the show let out, they’d scoop them up and head home.
For the kids, it was capital E entertainment — the kind you couldn’t get at home. “It was a place to be together,” says Connie, who remembered that for just a quarter, she could see a movie and enjoy a box of candy. “Before television was available, it was our entryway into the world. It brough the outside home.”
Theater becomes Theatre
Jim Kleinbeck can still remember the smell of it. The tight corridors, the tiny kitchen in a room upstairs. The long nights, the sweat, the tears, the elation. As the longtime theater operations coordinator for the City of Auburn’s Parks, Arts and Recreation department, he’s spent the better part of two decades running theater programs for the city, a job he willed into being. He also got a taste for the craft at an impressionable age.
“I was just 10 years old, in 1977, when we went to see ‘Grease,’” Jim says. “That was my first experience. I remember sitting back, in the back loge seats that rock back and forth. I rocked my way through ‘Grease.’”
By the mid-1970s, and with multiplexes popping up across the country, the Mullendores sold the theater to Dennis Hart, who transitioned the movie house into a live stage dinner theater. In 1991, it was sold again to Deanna and Wayne Robinson, who experimented with a variety of show styles, like mystery theater, book shows, a Mountain West Opry Show and Saturday open mics for kids.
And then in 2006, sold again to Jill and DB Douglas, at which time the City of Auburn signed a 15-year lease and assumed management of Auburn Avenue. After extensive refurbishments, it was ready for primetime. “We thought we were taking over a theater that was ready to go,” Jim says. “Well, it wasn’t ready to go — there was a lot of work to be done.” In October 2019, the Auburn City Council authorized the purchase of the Auburn Ave Theater, the property acquisition was completed in February 2020.
By the time the decade ended, the theater incorporated the Bravo Performing Arts series into the mix, in addition to the Auburn Community Players!, a community-led musical theater production program.
Joe Blotner and Suzie Newbury, then new to the area, joined the community productions around 2010 at a spring break camp for The Emperor’s New Clothes, which featured all three of their kids. “We’ve always been theater people,” says Joe.
“We just loved that the city had a theater program for kids,” Suzie finishes. “It was a cute little theater. It was so exciting to be on stage.”
Throughout the years, Joe, Suzie and their children have been involved in just about every production the community players have produced. They’ve acted, directed, choreographed — you name it, they’ve done it, and until late 2021, it was all at the Avenue Theater. “If it wasn’t a good place to spend time, we wouldn’t be there,” Suzie jokes.
Looking back at it all coming down, a flood of memories poured from the space like a broken faucet.
“Our kids, especially, were heartbroken,” Suzie says. “They had their signatures up in the dressing room.”
“It’s our home theater,” Jim continues. “And not just because it’s in Auburn. The Auburn Community Players! is a real community. A real place. We love it and we keep coming back.”
The Next Best Thing is the Next Best Thing
Anyone who’s stuck around for last call way past midnight can attest, the band Semisonic hit a particularly poignant string of lyrics when they wrote: “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” For a little theater that could, those closest would you to think of it that way. And what’s next is truly what’s best.
It’s not just lip service, either. In late October, Parks, Arts and Recreation Director Dayl Faber, alongside Arts and Events Manager Julie Krueger and Senior Project Engineer Matt Larson, delivered a presentation to city council that bore all. It’s not just a theater on the proposal, but a downtown arts destination Auburn has never experienced.
Where Hills of Comics now sits, a new city park and green space. B Street Plaza will look near unrecognizable, with string lights, decorative lighting, new vegetation, and outdoor seating. And of course, the theater will be whole again, about 2,000 square feet larger, and capable of holding nearly 50 more seats.
It’s all a proposal, of course, as the design is still underway. That includes other downtown infrastructure improvements, like water, sewer, and storm utilities, roadway pavement, and sidewalks.
“It is so needed, it is so asked for,” said Councilmember Tracy Taylor during the council presentation. “I am just overjoyed personally, because I know how important Postmark is to the city. Now adding this to the mix, it’s going to brighten up our downtown. I’m so proud of our leadership.”
To those grappling with the memories of what came, mixed with the hope of what’s to be, it’s elation, determination and motivation, the ratio shifting depending on the hour you ask.
“We’re excited about the new building,” Suzie says. “It’s horrible what happened, but out of it is going to come a new space that’s incredible.”
“We’ve been involved in so many different aspects,” Joe continues. “And we’re not alone in that. When there are issues and crisis that come up, there are members of this Auburn community that just run in and help.”
Connie couldn’t agree more.
“This is a place to be together,” she says one dreary afternoon, standing on the sidewalk overlooking a gravel lot. Just weeks ago, it was brick and concrete.” It’s made a huge difference in so many people’s lives, and it’s going to continue to make a difference.”
