Although the exterior of the McGregor library still looks exactly like a theater, once you get indoors, 14,000 books and a computer lab mask the building’s past. Just a few clues shed light on its former role.
But in the same way that Sparky, the 19-year-old library cat sleeping unobtrusively under the checkout counter, is easy to miss when you walk in, so are the clues of the building’s past.
The shape of the room - narrow and deep, is easy to envision filled with rows of seats and a screen in the back where a mother and two children now read.
And the door of an interior room still has a “Crying Room” sign on it.
Betty Crelia, library director, explains that movie theaters in the old days often had a room where mothers could take their crying children to quiet them, or nurse them. The room was equipped with speakers so they could still listen to the movie.
But if there are few clues of the building’s past in the main room, the same cannot be said of the projection booth and balcony, accessible by way of dusty, creaky stairs up a dark stairwell.
The projection room was left as it was when the building was acquired for a library. In it are two large projectors, a rewinding and splicing machine and other movie paraphernalia.
The balcony, although used for storage now, still has its original seats and other vestiges of times that were much different than they are today.
Ms. Crelia points out a visible line on the floor of the balcony leading down the center from the back wall to the front railing. The mark is where a four-foot-tall divider was built into the floor and split the balcony.
“When this theater was here, black people sat on one side and this was the only place they could watch the movie,” she explained.
Instead of a view of folks sitting below the balcony, the view now is of insulation and ductwork above the library’s ceiling, although the walls above the insulation level show rainbow colors and patterns from the original theater’s paint job.
“This is exactly as we found it 23 years ago when we started working on the library,” Ms. Crelia says, pointing out the two projectors. “One reel would be showing the movie and the other would take over when the reel would run out.”
The projector room is small and cramped and the projectors still contain ash from the carbon arc method used to light them. Cabinets still contain material and parts for the projectors, as well as books the projectionist probably read while at work.
The Ritz Theater projection room also contains an old Ritz neon sign and a poster board displaying old candy wrappers found at the theater.
According to a local history of the building, it first housed Shaffer’s Implements in the late 1800s, a store that sold wagons and buggies. It was converted into the Ritz Theater in 1936.
Frances Hudson, an 89-year old native of McGregor, was born in a house on Main Street - the same street the Ritz Theater was located.
She remembers the year the theater opened very well. It was the year color movies came to town for the first time and the year she and her husband were married.
“I remember we were excited because we grew up on silent movies,” she said. “And then I remember the Ritz showed the color pictures, too.”
She said the Texas Theater around the corner, which at the time was the only theater in town, showed mainly black and white silent films, which she said she also loved.
She does not remember the first movie she saw in the Ritz, but she does remember seeing “Ben-Hur” with her husband there. She said she and her husband had a Sunday movie routine in the early days of the theater.
“Sunday afternoon was a great time for the movies,” she said. “We’d go to church then come home and eat, then go to the movies Sunday afternoon.
“That was just a routine, for me and my husband.”
She said movies were 10 cents for children and 25 cents for adults back then. A big bag of popcorn cost a nickel.
The theater went dark in 1960. Owner Curtis McGinley donated the building for a library in 1986, according to a history of the building, and Ms. Crelia began a drive to raise funds to convert the building. The library gets ongoing funding from the city and McLennan County.
Mrs. Hudson says she was not upset when the theater began its third life as a library.
“People quit going to the theaters after they got videos and DVDs,” she said. She added though, that after the theater closed, she lost her last opportunity to do something she had always wanted to do.
“I always thought it would be so much fun to sit in that booth and sell tickets,” she said. “It just looked like it was a great thing to do.”
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