Walton Theatre

History :

The theater was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, and on April 21, 1986, some 72 years after its opening, recognizing that the theater had fallen into disrepair, then-mayor Raymond Baldi established the Walton Restoration Committee to oversee the restoring of the theater to its former glory. The theater has gone through many phases over the years, hosting professional troupes of Vaudeville players and the likes of Tom Mix. Live productions alternated with movies, which were shown since September of 1914, but thrived under the hand of area theater mogul, William Smalley, who leased the space in 1923 and maintained it for many years.
Often, circuit troupes came to the theater, and along with local actors, mounted lavish productions, both musical and dramatic. Pictures taken from the time reveal lush tableaux and costuming, all of which arrived with the troupe. Many area residents grew up in the theater during its heydays as a movie house. A local farmer remembers coming to the movies on Friday nights when other farmers, fresh from the barn would take advantage of their only night out for a quarter a ticket. "The smell in here was pretty ripe," he recalls, "but you didn't always have time to get cleaned up before you came out to the movies."