![]() ![]() Instead of letting it go and focusing new development on the fringes of the community, the folks in this small, central-Indiana community doubled down on their productive downtown. The beautifully refurbished art deco Astra Theater in the center of Jasper, Indiana, holds the heart of the community. Jasper, across the continent in Indiana, made very different decisions. It seems like it is about to start fading into a memory, a dream in search of a place to die. The Fourth Avenue Theatre-where I once had teenage movie dates and produced rock shows-was the symbol of vitality, wealth, and community dreams in the most productive part of the city, its core downtown. It’s like a fatal freeway crash you don’t want to see, but cannot look away from as you pass. People in Anchorage are watching each step with horror, like the other day when electricians decommissioned all the power in the building. Despite a number of efforts to save this theater, which holds a place on the National Register of Historic Places, just the other day I learned the real estate holding company which purchased it from a local investor is going to tear it down. Generations of Anchorage residents attended events there, but it’s been boarded up and closed for at least 20 years now. All the way into the 1980s, it was a first-run movie theater, convention space, and a treasured performance venue. An amazing neon sign in a vertical façade identified the focal point for cinematic and musical presentations in Anchorage for decades. His Anchorage creation featured a gorgeous gilded ceiling with the Big Dipper constellation laid out in lights, along with chandeliers, plush red carpet, beautiful murals, and solid wood-paneled walls. But the most iconic building, the jewel of downtown, was the Fourth Avenue Theatre.Īn art deco classic soaring four stories over a young frontier town, the Fourth Avenue Theatre was built in the 1940s by Austin “Cap” Lathrop, a developer who also built the Lathrop Theatre in Fairbanks. We had a Woolworth’s Drug Store, neon signs pointing out supper clubs, a locally owned newspaper, shopping, and hotels. There was a beautiful and lively gridded streetscape. We’d send off teams for the 1,000-mile Iditarod Sled Dog Race right on Fourth Avenue, among our neighbors on crowded streets in a festival atmosphere-something still done today, though not in the same scale. Department stores, the library, restaurants, hotels, churches, and most of the offices which housed local, state, and federal government buildings could be found within a 15-minute walk in the economic and cultural heart of the city.Įveryone went downtown. When I was a kid growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, in the 1970s, our family and friends used to spend a lot of time downtown, where you’d find most things of interest to residents of our small city. People just weren’t spending as much time downtown, something I understand very personally. Generations of people saw first-run movies at the Astra, but competition from multiplexes at the edge of town forced it to close. In a corner of Jasper, Indiana, in a downtown square, the Astra opened in 1936, when people lined up to buy tickets for MGM’s The Unguarded Hour, starring Loretta Young. But the simplest example I can put forward is the reasoning behind the community’s decision to renovate the Astra Theater. There are a lot of reasons why a town you may never have heard of-let alone visited-was named Strongest Town by thousands of people who voted in our 2022 contest.
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