SHOWBOAT MAJESTIC

About this property

The Majestic is a historic riverboat that is moored on the Ohio River at Greenup, Kentucky. Built in 1923, she was the last floating theater to be built in the United States, and one of its longest-lived. She was declared a National Historic Landmark on December 20, 1989. Majestic is moored on the Ohio River at Greenup, Kentucky. She is 135 feet (41 m) long, with a beam of 40 feet (12 m) and a draft depth of 1 foot (0.30 m). Her wooden hull has been sheathed inside a steel one, and is still visible from within the boat. Its superstructure housing the theater has been little altered since 1969. The last of the original traveling showboats, Majestic was built in 1923 in Pittsburgh, and plied the Ohio River and other portions of its watershed for many years, offering shows at towns along the way. The showboat was not necessarily a "ship" at all. It has no motor and no means of movement. Therefore, she came as a pair with a tugboat the Attaboy which towed her from venue to venue. Tom Reynolds and his family owned, lived on and ran it until 1959. Reynolds himself was born into an old established showboat family. Tom Reynolds first boat was the Illinois, lost to fire in 1916, which he replaced by building the America. From 1945 to 1959 there was an academic alliance between the Reynolds family and Hiram College, Kent State University, and Indiana University that allowed the schools to present summer theater experiences for students on Majestic. In December 2014, longtime drama professor, Tom Weatherston, produced a documentary about the alliance and life on the showboat. Capt. Tom Reynolds sold the Majestic in August 1959 for $30,000 to the Indiana University. He had piloted the Majestic on the Ohio, Kansas, Mississippi and Kanawha Rivers for 36 years. That December he was working on the tug Attaboy, moored alongside the Majestic, when it is thought the tug's engine kicked back, and Reynolds lost his footing and fell into the Kanawha River and drowned. He was 71 and had lived on or beside the river his whole life. She was forced into dry dock in 1965 by the Safety at Sea Act, which prohibited wooden-hulled vessels from transporting cast and crew on overnight journeys, though by that time the condition of her hull was fast deteriorating. The outer steel hull was added at that time, as were other modernizing conveniences, including air conditioning. While in dry dock, the City of Cincinnati purchased Majestic for $13,500 as part of its downtown Cincinnati Central Riverfront show case. She was docked at the Cincinnati Public Landing. The University of Cincinnati leased the showboat as a summer stock theater for its students until 1988.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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