The Afterlives and Second Acts of America’s Movie Palaces

My hometown is where the Ringling Bros. Circus started. One of the brothers used some of his circus fortune to build a theatre[0] in 1915. It fell in disrepair, and they only did bits and pieces of restoration while I was growing up. Then a few years ago they got enough funding to do a ton of restoration, and it is beautiful. Thankfully, the people in charge of it decided to stop trying to compete with the modern cinemas of neighboring towns by showing new movies on the old screen and projector, and now they do classic movie nights alongside various live performances.

[0]http://www.alringling.org/

More than completely abandoned ones, I love new spaces that preserve the nature of the theaters they used to be while becoming something else, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Theatre_(Houston)

We have a similar (though much smaller) theater in my small town. It was built in 1929, and was in disuse and disrepair until fairly recently.

It’s been renovated now, and feels pretty true to its roots. I’ve attended a few plays and such there, and it really feels like stepping back to the 1950s or so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyric_Theatre_(Harrison,_Arkan...

A wonderful single screen space in my home town was converted into a pool hall. You picked up the balls and paid for the table at the ticket booth and they reused the theater seats on a raised platform along the tables for viewing. It was really something.