Elizabeth and William Sinnhold were the first owners of the land where the Odd Fellows Building stands. In 1875, M.C. Rodenberger and Wm. Kestner established M.C. Rodenberger and Company there, making and selling marble and granite monuments, headstones, and tablets, and there are also stories that a brickyard on the land supplied bricks for the Kunster building. The original bandstand was first located here before being moved to Pautler Park and then to its present courtyard location. In February 1877, the Sinnholds sold the land to Emory Slate and David Tripp. After Tripp died in 1886, his share passed to his wife Johanna Tripp, who then gave it to the Odd Fellows upon her death in August 1914. Architect A. B. Frankel of East St. Louis drew plans for a three-story building for the Odd Fellow lodge, and by December 1925 construction by contractor F.A. Neuhaus of Red Bud was nearing completion. The first floor was a lodge room for business purposes, the second floor held an auditorium with a stage for performances, the third floor contained lodge rooms, and the basement, dug out by mules pulling scrapers, included a banquet hall, kitchen, and small auditorium. In its heyday, many of the community’s major social events took place there, with banquets in the basement and high school proms, school plays, and even graduation ceremonies in the second-floor hall, the largest space of its type in town. A naming contest for the theater was won by Mrs. John Van Buren of Alton, whose entry, The Capitol, earned her $5.00 in gold. Opening night for the theater was March 20, 1926, under its first owners, Mr. and Mrs. A. Hall of Dupo, when nearly 300 people attended the premiere of The Dancer of Paris, a silent film praised for appearing first in Waterloo rather than St. Louis. During silent films, audiences read dialogue on the screen while an organist played accompaniment, and Robert Noelke of Waterloo recalled seeing The Covered Wagon after children were invited to turn their Radio Flyer wagons into covered wagons for a downtown parade and received free admission. In June 1934, new ventilators and the Arctic-Nu-Air Cooling System were installed, and talkies introduced synchronized dialogue and sound effects. After Mr. and Mrs. Hall retired, Sylvester Schroeder and Augustus Freirdich took over the theater. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, it hosted an annual March of Dimes dance to raise funds for polio research in support of President Franklin Roosevelt's polio ailment. Ownership later passed to the Tobin family of St. Louis, and it was subsequently operated by Vernal Elliot, Tom Kutterer, Tony Giglotto, Don and Barb Crook, Paul Carlson, and again by Giglotto. In 1999, the Monroe Actors Stage Company formed, and on the 75th anniversary of the Capitol Theater it debuted its first live play, Harvey, and has continued performing several plays each year. The building remains the meeting place for Waterloo Oddfellows Lodge #27, its basement hall is used by the Waterloo Knights of Columbus, and since February 21, 1975, it has been home to the Waterloo Barbershoppers. Petrie Insurance was also once located in the building.