The Lewistown Theatre Mural

The mural on the side of the Fosnot-Wilson Building celebrates the movie theatres that shaped downtown Lewistown. Juniata County artist Dwight Kirkland of Blackleaf Studio painted it in 2013 and donated his time and labor as a gift to the community, asking those who enjoyed it to support the restoration of the Embassy Theatre.

The mural shows the fronts of the Embassy, Miller and Rialto theatres, with the logos of five long-running Lewistown theatres along the bottom. It also features faces from the town’s movie history:

• The Embassy Theatre (1927), shown with its original ushers in uniform, and cowboy star Roy Rogers, who appeared on its stage with his horse Trigger in 1941.
• The Miller Theatre, painted from an opening-night photo from March 31, 1949, with longtime manager Bob Hambright out front.
• The Rialto Theatre, which stood across from the mural from 1911 until 1958 and showed classics like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
• The Temple Theatre, Lewistown’s first, in the Masonic building across the Square (1894 to 1925), and the Pastime, a Saturday favorite for western shows (1906 to 1953).
• Jean Acker, a silent film star who grew up in Lewistown, and Edwin “Doc” Eby, the pharmacist known as Lewistown’s official greeter.

The history behind the mural was researched by Paul T. Fagley of Friends of the Embassy and first published in Common Ground Magazine in fall 2013.