Jack Coker ’22 giving a tour, pointing to pictures of the Dawn. Olivia Hajicek | Collegian
Members of the Hillsdale County Historical Society visited the Dawn Theater on April 1 to review the results of restoration efforts.
Mary Wolfram, the chair of the theater’s governance board, said it was a major construction project.
“We had to replace the roof. We had to get all new electrical. So we had to get bids on all of that,” Wolfram said. “Then we went through a two-year process where it happened. It was very complicated.”
Restorations ranged from structural repairs that made the building sound, to stenciled designs that recreated the original patterns in new colors. The theater is restoring its rare 1925 Wurlitzer pipe organ, which provided music and sound effects for silent movies. It is one of only about a dozen still unaltered from their original factory condition. After the organ’s restoration in Chicago, it will be reinstalled in the Dawn Theater.
During renovations, artifacts of the theater’s history were discovered and put on display for the tour, including film equipment, tickets, newspaper clippings, and candy boxes. Four old movie posters were also discovered, and the theater’s operations manager, Jack Coker ’22, had removed them from the basement walls. Coker said people had put them there for insulation.
“‘Mary Moves In’ — that’s the oldest one,” Coker said. “That’s from 1919. It is very early. That poster does not exist anywhere. I’ve asked some professionals and people in the industry and they said that it is lost media and this is the first one they’ve ever seen.”
Friends of the Dawn Theater is raising money to restore the posters. Several other posters were too fragile to remove or remained only in unidentifiable fragments.
A few guests went up to the projection room, which contains old projection equipment, some of which is in working condition. Coker said the room was made entirely of concrete because the nitrate film used in the theater’s early days could easily catch fire, even from the heat of the projector light.
“It’s been known to just combust when it gets hot,” Coker said. “If you have old films in the attic, it gets up to 80 degrees, they’ll just burn. They’re insanely flammable.”
After beginning its history as a parking garage, the Dawn Theater opened in 1919 as a house for silent movies. Vaudeville performances stopped with the advent of sound movies, but the theater continued until 1996. Two years later, new owners converted it into a nightclub called The Roxy. It was sold again in 2008, re-opened as an event venue, and closed in 2015.
The City of Hillsdale’s Tax Increment Finance Authority, which seeks to preserve Hillsdale’s historic downtown, bought the theater in 2016 and began funding the building’s renovation through a public-private partnership. Construction reached completion in 2021, followed by a grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony. Currently, the Dawn Theater serves as a space for both private gatherings and community events.
Connie Sexton, who serves on the board of the Friends of the Dawn Theater, said she hopes to bring movies back to the theater once they have raised enough money for the necessary equipment. She said they could do Movie Mondays or events for kids in the community.
“There’s no limit to what we can do once we get all that set up,” Sexton said.
Wolfram said the theater is an important part of the community.
“Lots of people that are still alive remember going to the Dawn Theater and seeing their first movie, or they remember going on their first date there,” Wolfram said. “It’s been a part of Hillsdale’s history for the last 100 years.”
