WABASH, INDIANA --
Rebecca Lambert, who helped plan and coordinate a tour of the Eagles Theater building and ball room for the Indiana Landmarks Board of Directors, takes a peek out the fourth-floor window of the downtown space on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015. "The last time there was an event here on this scale was probably in the 40s," Lambert said. After about a decade of disrepair, the Honeywell Foundation reopened the 1906 Vaudeville theater in 2010. Now showing new movies in the theater, the foundation is in the process of remodeling all four stories of building, including the ball room on the top floor.
Wabash, which currently has about 10,500 residents, is one of many small American towns trying to make a transition from an industrial past to a knowledge-based and creative economy.
CREDIT: Alyssa Schukar for The Wall Street Journal
Slug: "WABASH"