Built in 1927, the Poncan Theater spanned the transition from live performances to talking pictures as the fifth and grandest theater in a town of 16,000 people. Designed by the Boller Brothers of Kansas City in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, it reflected the specialty that made Carl and Robert Boller leaders in theater design across the mid and southwest, and it joined several of their theaters on the National Register of Historic Places. Constructed at a cost of $280,000, it helped transform Ponca City from a dusty oil town into a city known for its cultural offerings. As one of the few surviving atmospheric theaters in the country, its interior simulated a romantic outdoor Mediterranean courtyard, and it was designed for legitimate theater with special lighting effects and equipment. In its early years, vaudeville, singing, opera, drama, and dancing were combined with a featured silent movie, accompanied by a $22,500 Wurlitzer organ, two concert pianos, and the Poncan Theater Orchestra. The latest Pathe newsreels arrived twice weekly by airmail from New York, Chicago, and the west coast, then were edited and assembled by manager Fred Pickrel for local audiences before going on to other Oklahoma towns, a service made possible by his former role as manager of the Pathe Exchange in Oklahoma City. By 1929, talking pictures had clearly taken hold and the theater was wired for sound. During the Depression, when empty seats spread across the nation, the Poncan joined other theaters in using Bank Night during the 1930s to boost attendance, with cash drawings that sometimes exceeded $600 and drew crowds so large people stood outside listening through a loudspeaker. Attendance fell again in the mid-1950s because of television, and in 1955 the theater was remodeled with an enlarged marquee, replaced seats, and a waterfall-type curtain in place of the original. Though the musical instruments were sold, the theater still evokes the era when performers and public figures such as Ethel Barrymore, Sally Rand, and Admiral Byrd appeared there live or on screen.