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This two-story commercial building was built at 625 Main between 1886 and 1890. There are three double-hung sash windows on the second floor, partially outlined by a continuous stone lintel. An ornate, wedge-shaped, neon marquee projects above the entrance which has a center ticket booth flanked by doors.  The 1890 Sanborn map showed a grocery store in this space, as did the 1895 map. By 1901 this space was a sample room, used by traveling salesmen to display their wares. By 1908 a dry goods store was located here. The maps show the second floor was originally connected to the adjoining St. Cloud Hotel and contained hotel rooms.

George McCormick, whose family ran a chain of movie theatres in Colorado and New Mexico, transformed this building into the Rex Theatre in the 1930s. The McCormick family was heavily involved in the early movie business here. George’s father B.P. purchased the Skyline Theatre at 606 Main in 1925 having entered the movie business in 1916 with the Rialto in nearby Florence.  By 1926 he was a charter member of the Motion Picture Theatre Owner’s Association. The Rex opened as the third Main Street theatre in Cañon City with a 1935 showing of Redheads on Parade, a musical comedy, with tickets selling for twenty-five cents. The Rex flourished for many years before closing in 1957.  In 1986 brothers Mike Javernick and Jim Embleton moved My Brother’s Place bar, named for a fictitious bar that Mike saw in a beer commercial, from across the street, to the old Rex theatre.  They enlisted the help of bar patrons for the price of a mason jar of beer and moved the bar plank by plank. Mike operated the bar successfully for over 25 years before selling to Alan and Dawn Schmittel in 2008.