A mural celebrating the Guinness World Record-holding longest continuous running movie theater and the traveling entertainers Frank and Indiana Brinton now greets motorists driving on South 2nd Avenue in Washington.

The Walldogs muralists installed the mural on the east side of the State Theatre Saturday afternoon after it was painted offsite this week due to the warmer temperatures. Residents including Brinton expert and historian Mike Zahs and City Council Member Millie Youngquist watched the mural be installed from across the street. Youngquist serves on the city’s hotel/motel tax committee, which provided about half of the funds for this project, “Hotel/motel tax dollars have to, by law, have to be at least 50% tourism related, and we thought well, this is, as we can see from where we’re sitting today, there’s a lot of traffic that comes through on Highway 92. I mean everybody who comes to Washington pretty much comes down this road or entering the downtown will see it.”

The mural was also funded by a $5,000 Washington County Riverboat Foundation grant, and by the Chair-a-Thon Auction that was held by the Washington Chamber of Commerce and LET’s Center for the Healing and Creative Arts last week. While Youngquist feels there could be even more murals placed on the State Theatre to celebrate the Brintons and the documentary that was made about them and Zahs in 2017 titled “Saving Brinton,” she hopes this new art will draw even more visitors to the city’s landmark movie theatre.