This photo was taken 101 years ago and published in the Chillicothe Bulletin. The smoldering rubble is of the two-building complex that stood where 1027 and 1029 N. Second Street are today. In 1892, less than two years after the big Halloween night fire in Chillicothe, Dan Kelly built a three-story opera house on the north forty feet and a two-story business house adjoined on the south 22 feet of his lot. The Wagner grocery story was on the south side with an apartment over it.

The Opera House building had a general retail store on the street level, some apartments on the second floor and a full-scale opera house with stage, curtains, dressing rooms and seating for two-hundred and fifty. The opera house was a major cultural center for the city and surrounding area. That venture was brought to a close on the above date when fire broke out in the rear of the Wagner store and spread to the opera house building. Chillicothe and Peoria Fire Department companies fought the fire but were unsuccessful in their effort to control the fire. In a Bulletin account of the fire, it reported that window glass in the storefronts across the street were melted from the intense heat of the fire. 

Kelly did not rebuild his opera house and the rubble remained nearly as what is seen above. A local businessman and developer purchased the property in 1926. Elmer Sturm announced he would clear the property and build a new motion picture house in place of the opera house. His intention was to open on December 1, 1927, but two setbacks made that impossible. First, a labor/materials strike stalled the building and then Sturm suffered a spinal injury when he fell from a scaffold while working on a wall. When the structure was complete Sturm entered into the motion picture theater business and named the theater the “Sunset.” If you drive by the building today, you can see the large letter “S” set in a stone at the top of the building. Sturm did not indicate whether the letter stood for his name or that of the Sunset. There was no “Grand Opening” for the Sturm theater, but Bulletin notes that the Sunset was in full operation by March 1, 1927. The Sunset was the first movie house in Chillicothe to present a full-length sound-on-film “Talkie” movie, “The Jazz Singer” starring Al Jolsen later in the year. 

The front of the building was not like it is today. What is now the lobby was two rental rooms separated by an entrance hallway that led to the single auditorium. There were no concessions sold at the movie house. Confection vendors would bring their candies and popcorn into the auditorium to sell them before the movie began. The sales room where the concession stand is today, was originally rented to George M. Foote, who sold after-market automobile accessories. The room where the restrooms are today was originally a cleaners and haberdashery where men’s hats were cleaned and blocked. One of the cleaners was named Sunset Cleaners owned by Roger Mannering. Mannering later opened a men’s clothing and furnishing store across the street. The “Big Depression” money crunch brought a change to movie theaters beginning in 1932. The movie producers began installing concession stands in their buildings and confectioners were no longer allowed in the theaters. The first concession in the Sunset was an automatic drinking fountain.