Lerner Theatre
movie theater in Elkhart, Indiana, United States
The Lerner Theatre, previously known as the Elco Theatre, is a historic theatre located at Elkhart, Indiana, United States.
History
The Lerner Theatre was built in 1924, after Harry E. Lerner commissioned Chicago architect K. V. Vitchum to design it. Built as a vaudeville theatre, by the late 1920s it had evolved into a motion picture palace.
Lerner sold it to Warner Brothers in 1932, who operated it for a couple of years under the name Warner Theatre. They redecorated it in red and gold and added the distinctive "waterfall curtain", and a "huge vertical marquee spelling out the theatre's name in bold letters" out the front. After Warner Brothers went bankrupt, the Indiana-Illinois Theatre took over in 1934. They held a contest to rename it, with Elco Theatre chosen as the winning name.
In 1940, Manta & Rose Theatres acquired the Elco in 1940 and operated it for 20 years. They modernized it and took down the old vertical marquee, replacing it with a horizontal one.
In 1961 the building was purchased by Miller Theaters, Inc., run by William Miller and his family, until it was closed in 1987.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lerner Theatre” as movie theater in Elkhart, Indiana, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as movie theater in Elkhart, Indiana, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21188314. Authority coordinates are 41.684, -85.972. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1932, 1934 and 1940.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lerner Theatre”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Lerner Theatre primary sources, Lerner Theatre archive and Lerner research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lerner Theatre”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Lerner Theatre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.