The Vogue Theatre, a 1938 movie house the town rebuilt by hand

The marquee on River Street still spells out V-O-G-U-E in rows of bulbs, and the building behind it is one of the few small-town movie houses in Michigan that a community talked itself out of losing. The Vogue opened on January 12, 1938, an Art Deco picture palace built for the Butterfield chain that ran theaters all over the Midwest. The first feature was a forgettable comedy called “Hitting a New High,” but the room was the event: 935 seats spread across a main floor, a mezzanine, and a balcony, with a recessed entry that pulled you off the sidewalk into a streamlined lobby.

Then the slow part of the story. Like a lot of single-screen downtown theaters, the Vogue couldn’t keep up with multiplexes out by the highway, and it shut for good in the fall of 2005. The marquee went dark. In 2010 the Manistee Downtown Development Authority picked the building up out of a federal bankruptcy proceeding, mostly to keep it from being lost, and a feasibility study found the bones were still sound.

What happened next is the part locals tell with some pride. A nonprofit formed to bring it back. Filmmaker Michael Moore, who lives in northern Michigan, backed the idea publicly — relight the marquee, draw people downtown to shop and eat. The town raised roughly $2.6 million, and well over 500 volunteers pitched in time and labor on the rehab, which started in October 2012. On December 7, 2013, the Vogue reopened, run by the community, now with two screens carved out of the old hall.

So when you buy a ticket here, the money stays in town and the seat you’re in was probably scrubbed or hauled or painted by somebody who lives a few blocks away.