Coleman Theatre Beautiful: Oklahoma’s Grand Palace on Route 66

Drive into downtown Miami, Oklahoma, along historic Route 66 and you may not expect to find a grand 1920s theater rising above Main Street.

But there it is.

The Coleman Theatre Beautiful, with its distinctive Spanish-inspired exterior and elaborate interior, looks almost as though a piece of another era has been carefully set down in northeastern Oklahoma.

In many ways, that is exactly what it is.

The Coleman opened on April 18, 1929, when movie palaces and vaudeville theaters were among America's great gathering places. Nearly a century later, it is still welcoming audiences.

And the fact that it survived is part of what makes its story so remarkable.

A Theatre Built to Be Extraordinary

The Coleman was the vision of George L. Coleman Sr., a wealthy local businessman whose fortune came from the area's lead and zinc mining industry. He built the theater as both a vaudeville house and movie palace—at a reported cost of about $600,000, an enormous investment in 1929.

It was never intended to be ordinary.

Outside, the building reflects Spanish Mission/Colonial Revival influences. Step through the doors, however, and the atmosphere changes dramatically. The interior was designed in an ornate Louis XV style, filled with decorative plasterwork, rich architectural details and the kind of theatrical grandeur that belonged to America's golden age of movie palaces.

For residents of Miami in 1929, walking into the Coleman must have been an experience in itself.

The theater had approximately 1,600 seats, and its grand opening reportedly filled every one of them. The evening combined vaudeville entertainment with a motion picture—exactly the kind of mixed entertainment audiences of the era expected from the country's great theaters.

When the Theatre Was the Center of Town

Before televisions filled American living rooms, theaters like the Coleman were much more than places to watch movies.

They were community gathering places.

A trip to the theater might mean a movie, a touring performer, music, comedy or a vaudeville show. The building itself was part of the occasion.

The Coleman hosted live performers as well as films and became one of the important entertainment destinations of the region. Its location would eventually give it another layer of Oklahoma history: the theater sits directly along historic Route 66.

That connection feels particularly appropriate today.

Route 66 is remembered for neon signs, roadside motels, diners and service stations, but places such as the Coleman remind us that the highway also passed through real Oklahoma communities—places where people worked, gathered, celebrated and were entertained.

The Mighty Wurlitzer Comes Home

One of the Coleman Theatre's greatest treasures is something visitors can not only see, but hear.

Its Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ was originally installed for the theater in 1929. Theater organs were designed to provide music and sound effects for silent movies and live entertainment, and instruments such as this once occupied movie palaces across the country.

The Coleman's organ eventually left the theater and spent years away from its original home.

Then something remarkable happened.

It came back.

The restored Wurlitzer returned to the Coleman in the 1990s and once again became part of the theater where it had begun its life decades earlier. Today it remains one of the building's signature features.

There is something particularly fitting about that story.

A historic theater was being saved.

And one of its historic voices came home with it.

A Community Decides to Save Its Theatre

Many grand American theaters from the early twentieth century were demolished, remodeled beyond recognition or simply abandoned.

The Coleman could easily have met the same fate.

Instead, its story took another turn.

The theater was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. In 1989, the Coleman family donated the building to the City of Miami, beginning a new chapter in its history.

Then the community went to work.

Public and private funding helped support restoration, but so did something less measurable: hundreds of volunteers who contributed their time and effort to bringing the theater back to life.

That may be one of the most Oklahoma parts of the entire story.

A beautiful old building survived not simply because someone declared it historic, but because people decided it mattered.

They preserved it.

More Than an Old Building

Today, the Coleman Theatre Beautiful is still a working theater rather than a museum frozen in time. It continues to host performances and events while also welcoming travelers interested in its history and architecture.

That makes visiting the Coleman different from simply looking at photographs of an old theater.

You can walk through the doors.

You can stand beneath its ornate interior.

You can see the stage where generations of performers have appeared.

And sometimes, you can hear the Wurlitzer play again.

Nearly one hundred years after that opening night in 1929, the lights are still on.

Why Places Like the Coleman Matter

Oklahoma history isn't found only in museums or history books.

Sometimes it is standing right beside the road.

The Coleman Theatre tells several Oklahoma stories at once: the prosperity created by northeastern Oklahoma's mining era, the golden age of American entertainment, the development of towns along Route 66 and the determination of a community to preserve its heritage.

Buildings like this give history a physical presence.

They allow us to walk through a doorway and experience a small piece of the Oklahoma that existed before us.

Perhaps that is the real beauty of the Coleman Theatre.

It isn't simply that the building survived.

Oklahoma kept the story alive.

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Explore Oklahoma

Coleman Theatre Beautiful

Miami, Oklahoma

Located in downtown Miami along historic Route 66, the Coleman can be experienced through performances, special events and opportunities to explore the historic theater.

Look for:

• The Spanish-influenced exterior

• The ornate Louis XV-style interior

• The historic stage and auditorium

• The Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ

• Original architectural details throughout the building

• The theater's connection to historic Route 66

Handmade Oklahoma Tip: Don't just photograph the front of the building. Look closely at the architectural details, marquee, doors, interior ornamentation and theater sign. They are the pieces that help tell the larger story.

Walkthrough visits offered daily as available. Full tours given on the half hour.
Call the theatre to schedule yours at (918) 540-2425

The Coleman Theatre has a full schedule of productions and shows, including the "Don't Miss" Silent Movies with accompaniment on the Mighty Wurlitzer by the extraordinary Dennis James of New York.  

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Oklahoma Places is part of Handmade Oklahoma's Visual History of Oklahoma—a continuing collection celebrating the landmarks, landscapes, communities and stories that make our state unique.