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Isaac Charles Mishler, circa 1906
Credit: Courtesy of Joan Grant Repetto
After moving from Lancaster to the booming railroad town of Altoona in 1881, Isaac Charles Mishler ran a cigar store, invested in a baseball team, and in 1893 became a partner in Altoona's Eleventh Avenue Opera House. By the time he opened Altoona's palatial Mishler Theatre in 1906 he owned theaters in four other mid-size industrial cities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.