A three-story front in an exotic, Japanese-influenced idiom: a broad tiled hip roof with deep bracketed eaves and small hip-roofed dormers crowned the building, carried on heavy timber-like brackets. Below it two upper stories of light brick were divided into bays by piers and screened with wood-railed balconies and grids of small-paned windows. A projecting marquee spanned the ground-floor entrance, flanked by a tall ornamental terra-cotta blade sign, with shop bulkheads and poster cases lining the sidewalk beneath.
The Shenandoah Theatre opened on May 4, 1912, designed by F.A. Duggan and built and operated by O.T. Crawford. It began as a legitimate house presenting vaudeville and musical comedy and had turned to motion pictures by 1916. In 1941 the theater was remodeled in the Art Moderne style by Leo F. Abrams, reopening as the New Shenandoah with about 1,072 seats. Over its later decades it was run by Arthur Enterprises, Komm Theaters, and the St. Louis Amusement Company, and by the 1970s it was screening second-run double features, B-movies, and kung-fu pictures. It closed in 1977 and was demolished afterward.
