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Midwest
United States
Wausau
Wisconsin
Commercial Building
Demolished / Lost
Architecture
Corporate Geography
Public Research
29 Outdoor Theatre, Wausau
This Schofield Avenue drive-in followed the familiar postwar script of roadside leisure, chain affiliation, and eventual retail turnover. What makes it useful is how clearly all those layers landed on the same tract.
29 Outdoor Theatre
2707 Schofield Avenue, Wausau, Wisconsin 54402
Precision: Exact
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Quick Take
- The 29 Outdoor Theatre captures the drive-in era at the scale of highway frontage and automobile access rather than downtown block frontage.
- Its sequence of names and operators shows how even roadside entertainment could be absorbed into larger theater chains.
- The later replacement by Marcus screens and then Target makes the parcel especially strong for tracking commercial succession on the same site.
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Why It Matters
The 29 Outdoor Theatre broadens the batch beyond downtown facades and enclosed auditoriums. It brings postwar roadside entertainment into the Wisconsin program through a parcel built for cars, large clearances, and highway visibility.
Its ownership history makes the site stronger than a generic drive-in case. The shift from local operators to Marcus shows how chain management extended into outdoor leisure spaces as well as indoor theaters.
The later sequence from drive-in to multiplex to big-box retail gives the parcel unusual clarity. A single site records several major phases of changing entertainment and commercial geography.
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Research Narrative
A Highway 29 Leisure Landscape
The drive-in opened in 1949 as the Marathon Outdoor Theatre on highway-oriented ground rather than in Wausau's downtown entertainment core. The site belonged to a very different spatial logic from the traditional movie house.
Its screen, parking field, and access roads make the parcel a useful record of how postwar leisure was physically organized around the automobile.
Renaming and Chain Takeover
By 1952 the theater had been renamed the Hi-Way 29 Drive-In, and in 1976 Marcus took it over and renamed it the 29 Outdoor Theatre. Those changes show the site passing through multiple commercial identities without leaving the same parcel.
That sequence demonstrates how roadside exhibition was folded into larger corporate systems rather than remaining purely local.
From Drive-In to Multiplex to Target
After the drive-in closed in 1986, Marcus built the Marco C I & II on the site, and later a Target occupied the ground. Few Wisconsin parcels show such a clean sequence of entertainment-to-retail transformation.
The site is therefore valuable for more than nostalgia. It documents a durable commercial logic in which the same highway-edge ground keeps being reformatted for new kinds of consumption.
Public Actions
Campaign / Petition Record
Ordered oldest to newest.
Roadside-leisure era
Roadside Entertainment
The 29 Outdoor Theatre put Wausau-area moviegoing onto Schofield Avenue roadside ground
by Public record Previous
Its tract clearly records postwar leisure moving toward car-oriented space.
Chain-affiliation era
Commercial Continuity
The drive-in passed through a more commercialized operating phase before its land use shifted again
by Public record Previous
That transition is part of what makes the site a clean layered case.
Retail-turnover era
Redevelopment
Retail replacement overwrote the outdoor-theater parcel with very little visible evidence left behind
by Public record Current
Its afterlife shows how fully drive-in ground could be standardized into commercial land.
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29 Outdoor Theatre, Wausau, Wisconsin
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FAQ
Why include a drive-in in a demolished/lost city pack?
Because drive-ins were major parts of postwar entertainment geography and reveal a very different urban form than downtown theaters.
What does Marcus add to the story?
The chain takeover shows that outdoor theaters were also part of larger corporate exhibition systems.
Why is the later Target site important?
It makes the parcel's long commercial succession easy to read, from drive-in to multiplex to standardized retail.
Sources
Source Trail
Cinema Treasures: 29 Outdoor Theatre
reference
Primary public chronology for the drive-in's opening, renamings, Marcus takeover, closure, and later redevelopment.
Library of Congress image search
archive
Useful for drive-in comparison and the wider visual language of highway-edge entertainment.
Place Snapshot
- Place
- 29 Outdoor Theatre
- Location
- 2707 Schofield Avenue, Wausau, Wisconsin 54402
- Coverage
- Exact
Key Facts
- Region
- Wausau, Wisconsin / Midwest
- Location type
- Commercial building / drive-in theater
- Current condition
- Demolished; site later reused for multiplex and retail
- Primary research value
- Highway-edge leisure, chain takeover, parcel-scale commercial succession
- Comparative angle
- Useful alongside Oshkosh, Janesville, and Ohio drive-in losses for postwar roadside entertainment ground
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