Ishpeming May Sell Butler Theater Seats

50 years ago last week, the “Anatomy of a Murder” movie had its world premiere.

It happened at Ishpeming’s Butler Theater.

Now the city is trying to get rid of some of the former theater’s seats.

The Butler was built in 1915 and closed in the early ’90s.

For a while now, the city has had many seats from the old theater floor in storage.

Tonight, the city council is expected to declare them surplus municipal property, which would open up the process to start selling them.

Ishpeming Public Works Superintendent Jon Kangas says anyone interested in the seats should keep 2 things in mind.

First, there’s no word on exactly how old the seats are — whether they’re original 1915 seats or not.

Second, they’ve been lying in a city DPW garage for a number of years.

He says potential buyers may want to end up getting any seats they want reupholstered, and he strongly suggests looking them over first.