Harnois Theater around 1910

A virtually lost piece of Missoula History was the Harnois Theater.  Located in what is now a parking lot in the 200 block of East Main, it was built in 1909 for local impressario, Charles Harnois.  Designed by architect A.J. Gibson with the interior décor completed by the Twin City Scenic Studio, Missoula’s premier opera house of the era was comprised of three floors with nine exits, seated up to 1200 people and housed a 58 feet wide, 35 feet deep and 65 feet high stage.

Unfortunately, the theater was built just as feature length movies were about to hit the country. Mr. Harnois soon realized Missoula’s taste for this new entertainment would eclipse its desire for vaudeville and light opera, and therefore sold out in 1914.  The new owners changed the name to the Missoula Theater and, by the early 1920s the building, now a well established movie house, had been renamed the Liberty Theater.  By the early 1940s, the theater had closed and the Harnois was converted to Liberty Lanes, a bowling alley.  When Liberty Lanes moved to new quarters in the 1960s, the building was razed.

A curious side note: the theater was tangentially involved in an important piece of the history of the struggle for civil liberties.  Shortly after it opened, Harnois rented the basement to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Jack Jones of the IWW (the Wobblies).  From there, Flynn and Jones orchestrated the IWW’s first free-speech battle using non-violent civil disobedience.

The city had passed an ordinance disallowing the IWW from broadcasting its positions to the public through the mouths of streetcorner soapbox speakers. Accordingly, hundreds of supporters from across the northwest were called upon to ride the rails to Missoula to exercise their right to speak publicly.  So many came to speak and be arrested that the city and county jails were clogged for weeks.  The city’s resources stretched to the breaking point, it finally had to back down and repeal the ordinance.