The Plaza Theater - Oklahoma City, OK
Posted by: 
hamquilter
N 35° 29.164 W 097° 32.388
14S E 632457 N 3927928
A 1930s theater comes alive again in the 21st Century.
Waymark Code: WMAKRC
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 01/26/2011
Views: 6
The Plaza Theater building at 1725 N. W. 16th Street is located in a shopping area bordered by Historic District residential areas. The commercial area is known as The Plaza District.
This theater building was constructed in 1935, in the Moderne style. The auditorium sits at a right angle to the lobby and extends behind the adjacent buildings. It originally seated 900. This was the first air-conditioned theater in Oklahoma. It had a massive Spanish Deco fireplace which kept the moviegoers warm in Winter.
One of the newfangled features of the theater was a Rock-Ola Jukebox, hidden in front of the stage, which would rise during intermission and play the latest hits, not on records, but via telephone line, with dancing lights jumping around the stage to the music. Quite a show for those days.
Renovation in the 1950s altered the seating capacity to 500. The theater closed in 1979 and the building lay vacant for decades. In December 2007, the renovated and remodeled theater reopened as the Lyric Theater at the Plaza, with a seating capacity of 279, which presents plays and musicals in live entertainment.
A photo of the theater in the 1930s can be found at this link: (
visit link)