T.B. Sheldon Memorial Auditorium
Built: 1904
National Register of Historic Places: 1976
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect/Builder Lowell Lamoureaux
Currently: Sheldon Theatre
The Phoenix Theatre, The Sheldon’s resident community theater company, got its name from the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes, because The Sheldon Theatre did that. Twice. In 1918, a major fire gutted the building, and another fire in 1988 caused the roof to fly four feet into the air.
But The Sheldon has lived many lives before and after those flames. The theater is now known for hosting live performances and it started out that way too. Its first ever production was the comic opera, The Royal Chef. But for many years in between it existed primarily as a movie house.
Film first came to Red Wing as part of a traveling tent show in 1897, and a few theaters–The Gem, The White Vaudette, and The Grand Electric–showed silent short films in the early 1900s.
The Sheldon quickly joined the cinema business, and eventually graduated to showing feature length silent movies by 1911. The first fire allowed them to upgrade their projection equipment during the repairs, which shifted them more into the movie business.
Known as “The Auditorium” while it functioned as a movie theater, it met with competition from other theaters like The Chief, The Metro, and a drive-in theater on Highway 61.
The competition reached a head in 1957, when John Wright, owner of The Chief took James Fraser, operator of The Auditorium, to court. Fraser leased the building from the city and the city allowed him to pay below-market rent. This, Wright claimed, allowed Fraser to bid more for the most popular movies, which prevented The Chief from competing for Red Wing’s box office dollars.
Wright won an early victory, and The Auditorium was forced to cease showing movies. But after appealing to the state supreme court it was able to return to the film business. Wright would eventually sell The Chief, and Fraser would go on to run The Auditorium, The Chief, and the drive-in.
But, as before, this life of The Sheldon would come to an end. In the first week of May 1986, The Auditorium ran its final new movie, Gung Ho starring Michael Keaton. Then on May 9th, Fraser and The Auditorium were feted with one final picture show. The evening resembled what would have taken place at The Auditorium fifty years earlier, when they played an old news reel that promoted war bonds, a 1936 Our Gang short, and the 1936 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie Top Hat.
The theater then closed for another round of renovations, experienced its second fire, and re-opened in 1988. It still occasionally plays movies, but now is best known for hosting the Phoenix Theatre Company, the Sheldon Brass Band, the annual high school musical, and a full schedule of traveling music, dance, theater, and comedy.
Through all of these changes, the theater has kept its ornate tiling, plaster carvings, and renaissance style paintings. And, just as Theodore B. Sheldon wished when he gave the money for it in the first place, it remains a place for civic pride and community gathering.
More information and a public tour is available inside The Sheldon when the box office is open.
