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AKA: Wealthy Street
Source: Jim Fahlstedt
This ancient theater was built by the Poisson family and ran vaudeville when it opened! The Poissons, Reynolds and Johnson families intermarried and Butterfield and Johnson ended up running the Wealthy as an art house. This was a fairly successful enterprise. I worked there and we could pack the joint when we had a Bridget Bardot film or an Ingmar Bergmann film. The manager when I worked there was the late Earl Smith. The regular operator (projectionist) was Woody Gillette and the box office was handled by an English lady named Marge Smith. This is the last place in Grand Rapids that I expected to survive.