Milestones Icon: Trojan Theatre

The Trojan Theatre at 513 Main St. in Longmont was built in 1939. The building is currently the performing arts center for the Longmont Theatre Co., a volunteer-theater group created in 1957.

Originally known as the Fox Theater, the building was part of a movie theater enterprise begun by the Skouras brothers in St. Louis, Missouri.

Charles Spyros and George Skouras were born in Greece and immigrated to America in 1910. Working as bus boys, they saved money and started investing in nickelodeons, multipupose theaters that featured short motion pictures, illustrated songs, slide shows and lectures that could be seen for a nickel.

The brothers later worked with Warner Brothers and eventually headed the Fox Theatre empire which had theaters in communities across the United States.

The Fox Theater in Longmont was built in the art-deco tradition popular in the 1930s and 1940s. These miniature palaces were gaudy and ornate and not the traditional cookie-cutter cinemas seen today. The buildings had angular, linear composition and stepped fronts, and used decorative, polychromatic materials.

In 1960, the theater was purchased by Richard Klein, who had managed theaters in South Dakota and Nebraska before moving to Colorado. He renamed the theater the Trojan Theatre, and it continued to operate as a movie house.

His daughter, Connie Lehman, wife of former Longmont Times-Call publisher Ed Lehman, managed the theater for 26 years. Klein had formed the independent chain K-Theatres Inc., and sold the chain to Commonwealth Theatres in 1986. The group of theaters included the Movies 1, 2, 3 and Video Store, The Parkway, the Courtyard 4, the Star-Vu and the Trojan.

“When we moved to Longmont, it was a small town,” Connie said. “Then the FAA and IBM came, and growth started. We really had to clean the building up to get it ready to open. Theater tickets were 25 cents. Dad raised the price, and people were furious. The smoking area cost 10 cents more. People would call him and say, ‘What time does the movie start,’ and he’d reply, ‘What time can you get here.’ He was a smart business man.”

Klein covered up the Art Deco façade and remodeled the theater. “He would have been astounded they returned it to that,” Lehman said. “He put so much money into remodeling it.”

When Klein sold K-Theatres Inc., he kept the properties and leased the buildings to Commonwealth. He worked with others in the community to raise funds so the Longmont Theatre Co. could purchase the building in 1990.

“They really worked hard to raise funds,” Connie said. “He reduced the price by half to allow them to buy it. He wanted it to remain a theater. Otherwise, it would have been torn down.”

The Longmont Theatre Co. bought the building from Klein for $600,000 and renovated the movie house to accommodate the needs of a performing arts theater. The amateur theater group had begun in 1957, producing shows in schools and community halls until they found a permanent home.

The theater company continues to use the facility, producing six to nine shows a year.

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