History

Laconia in the early twentieth century was defined by two economies: the mills along the Winnipesaukee River that had made the city prosperous since the mid-nineteenth century, and the resort trade drawn by the magnificent lakes — Winnipesaukee, Winnisquam, Opechee — that ringed the city. Summer visitors arriving by Boston & Maine Railroad from Boston and Portland expected entertainment; year-round residents working in the woolen and hosiery mills had their own reasons for wanting a night at the pictures. The Colonial Theatre served both populations from its Main Street location.

The renovation that gave the theater its current Art Deco character was likely carried out in the 1930s, when theater owners across America updated their facades to compete with the gleaming new cinemas being built by the major Hollywood circuits. The Moderne idiom — smooth white surfaces, geometric relief panels, the bold vertical sign that draws the eye from half a block away — was affordable to apply to an existing structure and immediately legible to audiences conditioned by years of exposure to Hollywood’s own Art Deco production design. The Colonial’s renovation followed this national pattern, translating it into the modest but dignified scale appropriate to a New Hampshire market town.

Laconia’s Motorcycle Week, held each June since 1916 and one of the oldest motorcycle rallies in the United States, brings tens of thousands of visitors to the region every summer, transforming the city into a temporary intersection of engineering culture and resort leisure. The Colonial Theatre’s survival through those decades of changing demographics speaks to the resilience of well-built civic architecture in communities that retain a sense of their own history.