New owners Steven and Courtney Godfrey bought the Michigan Theater in 2019 and for the past couple years have been showing occasional second-run films to fund its restoration.

The historic building, accented with geometric features that some may call Art Deco but which is more specifically Streamline Moderne style, opened as the Michigan Theater in 1930. It was owned and managed by Delft Theatres through 1975, when it sold to Melcorp Theaters, who operated the Michigan until it closed in 1985, according to the National Register of Historic Places. The building is one of many on the register as part of the Escanaba Central Historic District.

In the ’90s, the theater screened a few movies but more prevalently served as a community venue hosting various events, including live musical performances, teen dances and presentations. In the early 2000s, it was occupied by Silver Winds Church.

By ’05, Silver Winds had moved out “because of structural problems” but was “exploring the option of refurbishing and returning to the historic Michigan Theater,” as the Daily Press reported at the time. Their ideas did not come to fruition, and the theater sat vacant.

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press | Powerwashing the exterior of one of the historic theaters on Ludington Street reveals colored stucco in this photo taken July 22.

Thirteen years later, the Godfreys were tempted by the low price tag on the building and dreams of a revitalized, operating theater on Escanaba’s main street. Steven, from Escanaba, and Courtney, from Ford River, were born in the 1990s and did not get to experience the theater’s former life.

The couple has been able to officially call themselves owners of the building since spring 2019. They knew it was going to be a lot of work to turn the place around, but the scope of what would be required was not yet evident.

Early jobs included patching the roof; the removal of fabric hanging on the walls that had held dust, must and odor; plus general cleaning of the building. The Godfreys registered Old Michigan LLC in 2020, though in retrospect, filing as a nonprofit might have been more useful for their cause, Steven admitted.

“We found out the building was going to be about a million (dollars) if we just refurbished it all at once,” he said, pointing out that that price was pre-COVID. “We were working on getting some grants and stuff to fix it up, and that’s when we learned, like, a lot of those grants are 50-50 match. We didn’t have $500,000 sitting around, so we needed a way to raise money.”

The first means of doing so were selling T-shirts and operating a haunted house.

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press | In the lobby of the Streamline Moderne-style Old Michigan sits a projector once used by the Tivoli Theater in Stephenson.

During the first haunted house in 2022, the fact that the rows of seats were not bolted down led to half the seats in the theater toppling down from rear to front in a “comical domino effect,” Steven said. Such an incident only happened once; they soon invested in bolts.

The Old Michigan conducted a haunted house again in 2023. Both years, about 250 people paid admission and traveled through the place.

Wanting to be able to enjoy films in the theater even if they weren’t yet able to show them to the public, the Godfreys purchased a projector that was intended for personal use.

“That projector ended up being — we thought it looked great, so we got it mounted and everything, and put in the sound system, and started looking into what we’d have to do to legally show movies,” Steven said.

They managed to get set up with Warner brothers and are now permitted to show available second-run movies. The first year, in the fall of 2023, they squeezed in a couple weekend showings of “Nightmare on Elm Street” before closing for the year because the building has no heat. In the summer of 2024, they ran films every weekend.

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press | The house and screen of the former Michigan Theater in Escanaba is shown as it looks today.

Having discovered that was a bit much to handle in addition to raising a three-year-old plus working their regular jobs — Steven is a machinist at Marble Arms, and Courtney co-runs For the Love of Cupcakes along with her sister — showtimes at the Old Michigan this year have been more sporadic.

At theoldmichigan.com, Steven periodically uploads blog posts describing the journey, providing updates to fans about upcoming events and cracking jokes about things like the pigeons living in the marquee and the state of the paint.

“We are trying to do this the right way, the legal way, the safe way,” he wrote on May 9, 2024, explaining the theater had had to make some changes to comply with fire code. “It is becoming more and more apparent to us the further we go on this project that restoring a slightly neglected building that is almost 100 years old is not a cost-effective venture.”

A few weeks later, another post expounded on some hard work that had been done that was valuable and time-consuming but not necessarily visible to visitors.

The Old Michigan has grown a fanbase of people eager to see the old theater revived and who enjoy viewing old films on the big screen even now, during the in-process phase.

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press | Moviegoers arrive at The Old Michigan for a showing of the 1986 horror-comedy-musical "Little Shop of Horrors" recently.

“I look forward to seeing their announcements on Facebook, and I’m always excited for whatever movies they show,” said Bob Pierson, a regular customer, hands full of popcorn and snacks as he prepared to enter and watch the 1986 comedy-horror-musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” which runs again at 6 p.m. today.

“I was here (at the Michigan Theater) as a kid,” said Pierson, age 66. “I remember coming out with my friends … I saw ‘Star Wars’ here, ‘Live and Let Die,’ ‘Silent Running’ … ‘Let it Be’ by the Beatles and the original ‘Concert for Bangladesh.'”

Since the theater reopened its doors to the public less than two years ago, Pierson said he’s been about 20 or more times.

It still needs a lot of work, and the biggest priority is plumbing — and has been for a few years. There is no working toilet in the building, so a port-a-john is provided outside.

“Because of the state the building was in … all the pipes are rusted out. It has to be completely redone. There’s no, like, patching pipes or anything,” Steven said.

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press | The button on "Space Invaders," one of several arcade games at the theater, reflects that quarters are not needed to play.

Plumbing was intended to be the focus of this year, until City of Escanaba Code Enforcement requested that something be done about the peeling paint on the building’s exterior.

Powerwashing white paint off the facade last month revealed colored stucco underneath, so now the plan is to finish stripping the white paint and then talk to stucco contractors to see if it can be restored.

While the first money-making initiative for the theater restoration project was selling merchandise, the Godfreys quickly found that movie ticket sales raked in more revenue. Even though they only charge $5 for admission, Steven said that the first two weekends of showing movies brought in more money than the year-and-a-half spent selling T-shirts.

The first fundraising effort solely dedicated to one specific project — the plumbing — will take place the week of Sept. 14-10 in the form of a Harry Potter marathon.

The Godfreys are grateful to the members of the public who have patronized the theater so far, helping the venture along.

“You are what business nerds would call ‘early adopters,'” Steven wrote in a blog post from June 8, 2025. “Our theater is what those same nerds would call a ‘minimum viable product.’ A minimum viable product is usually a scraped-together, barely-working product that is a fuzzy representation of what the product could eventually be. … The early adopters are the people who in twenty years will proudly say, ‘You know that super awesome theater in Escanaba? Yeah, I used to go there before they even had bathrooms!’ Without early adopters, things like the Old Michigan Theater wouldn’t get anywhere.”

Though the theater’s restoration may have been a bigger project than they initially bargained for, the Godfreys are now in it for the long haul, but thankfully, the community is, too.

To stay apprised of happenings at the Old Michigan, readers can follow the “Old Michigan” Facebook page or go to the url www.oldmichigan.com.

R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press | A wall inside the Old Michigan Theater, revealed when the Godfreys took down fabric coverings, bears a sconce and 1930s decor.