Central Park Theatre
- This article is about the cinemas at 2909 and 2005 Bessemer Road, for the 1925 theater at 3207 Bessemer Road, see Central Park Family Theater.
The Central Park Theatre was a cinema located at 2005 Bessemer Road, near Avenue T in Birmingham's Central Park neighborhood.
A Central Park Theatre was located at 2909 Bessemer Road in the 1920s and 1930s, with Everette Haynes as proprietor. In 1939 that location had been renamed the Trianon Theater with Carl Reed as proprietor and Eugene Rushing operating a barber shop at the same address. Two years later, it resumed operating at the Central Park Theatre with Hugh Wages as manager.
In 1942 the number for the address of the Central Park Theatre had changed to 2005 Bessemer Road. Wages was still managing the business. In the 1950s the theater served as a meeting place for the North Alabama Citizens Council. Asa Carter allegedly shot J. P. Tillery and Charles Bridges during a Federated Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy meeting at the theater on January 28, 1957.
References
- Polk's Birmingham City Directory (1926) Birmingham: R. L. Polk & Co.
- Polk's Birmingham City Directory, Including Fairfield, 1944 (1945) Richmond, Virginia: R. L. Polk & Co.
- "So Now Klansmen Shoot Each Other" (January 29, 1957) The Washington Afro-American, p. 19