Editor’s note: This story was first published by dsm magazine on Aug. 26.
After a decade-long intermission, the lights are coming back on at the Ingersoll Dinner Theatre. With a simpler new name, The Ingersoll is set to reopen in November with live entertainment and full-course meals, reviving a hot spot that opened almost 90 years ago. Over the years, it evolved from a movie theater to a live theater and, later, a series of short-lived ventures in the early 2000s. For a hot minute, it was even an after-hours club.
In 1939, the local entrepreneur and philanthropist Abraham Harry “A.H.” Blank built the building at 3711 Ingersoll Ave. to become one of Central Iowa’s first theaters to show movies with sound, or “talkies.” He hired the local architecture firm Wetherell & Harrison, the same team behind the Varsity Cinema, the Hiland Theatre and the Forest Theatre (which now houses Creative Visions)…