MURPHYSBORO The Liberty Theater has been a Murphysboro landmark from almost a century, and now its being recognized as a historically significant building by National Park Service.

The Liberty was recently named to the National Register of Historic Places, making it the sixth building in Murphysboro to garner the honor. Liberty Director Lois Murphy said the process took almost 18 months and involved hours of work.

There was lots of research and everything, she said. It was time-consuming, but I thought it was worth it and not too expen-sive.

Mayor Ron Williams said the national recognition is good for the city.

I think that The Liberty Theater being place on list is just a great, great thing Murphysboro, he said. With all effort thats gone into it with renovations and improvements, its finally paying off. It is for Murphysboro and the area a really neat building that has been saved from ruin.

Rachel Malcolm Ensor, an SIU professor and co-owner of Historic Property Consultants, helped write The Libertys proposal to the Illinois Historic Preservation Board, a first step in getting National Register of Historic Places recognition.

Criteria for making the list include significance in architecture, archaeology, engineering and culture. Historic places may be associated with the lives of significant persons in the past, embody the distinctive characteristics of a type of place or era, or yield important information about history or prehistory.

For The Liberty, its connection was with events that made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of history.

Ensor said The Libertys close affiliation with Hollywood was an important factor in it being placed on the register.

The Liberty Theater falls right in line with the development of the cinema in the United States, she said. Originally The Liberty was a flicker theater for little 15-minute flicker pictures. As the movie industry changed so did the Liberty.

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