A cylindrical corner tower marks the entrance at the fork of Virginia and Vermont Avenues, capped by a ribbed copper dome, now verdigris, on a terra-cotta drum. Dark red brick carries an elaborate cream terra-cotta program: round-arched openings framed by interlaced-circle medallions and geometric latticework, echoed in the window surrounds and in a parapet frieze of X-motifs and linked ovals. From the rounded entrance the auditorium block runs long and low down the side street, its brick wall punctuated by terra-cotta-trimmed windows, with the stagehouse rising above the roofline at the rear.
The Virginia Theater opened on December 11, 1910 with a vaudeville program attended by roughly 800 people. Built for August Busch at a cost of $40,000 and designed by the firm Klipstein and Rathmann, it stood at the fork of Virginia and Vermont Avenues in Dutchtown. It operated first as a vaudeville house and then as a movie theater; the Wehrenberg circuit acquired it in 1928 and ran it as a cinema until it closed on May 12, 1956. A succession of church congregations afterward occupied the building, adapting the auditorium for worship and adding a small attached residence for a pastor. The last congregation left around 2012, and the building has since stood vacant, passing to the city's Land Reutilization Authority after tax default.
