Birmingham Auditorium
Birmingham Auditorium was a large performance hall located at the northwest corner of 17th Street and 3rd Avenue North. Constructed in the 1890s as a civic auditorium, the building was financed by selling subscriptions to the public.
In 1898 the auditorium was sold to Jake Wells who operated it as the Bijou Theatre, presenting live Vaudeville shows every night with matinees on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and an 8-piece house orchestra. It was one of the finer Vaudeville houses in the city, and George M. Cohan played there in 1903. After its closure in 1915 the shuttered auditorium was reopened to host sessions of the 1916 Reunion of the United Confederate Veterans.
In 1917 the theater reopened as Loew's Bijou Theatre or Loew's Vaudeville, exhibiting acts on Loew's Vaudeville circuit, including circus and animal acts and an annual "midget show".
Loew's moved its acts to the rival Temple Theatre in 1925 and the former Bijou was completely renovated, becoming the Pantages Theater on the national circuit founded by Alexander Pantages. The remodeled auditorium was designed by David O. Whilldin. It was equipped to pair live stage shows with motion picture screenings. As such it survived as one of the last Vaudeville stages in Birmingham.
The theater continued into the mid-1940s, although the blacking-out of the final "s" in the marquee sign and its omission in advertisements may indicate that it was no longer operated by RKO, which had taken over the Pantages chain in the mid 1930s.
Paramount took over control of the cinema and operated it though its Wilby-Kincy subsidiary until 1946, after which it was operated independently as the Birmingham Theater, billed as "The largest and finest colored theatre in the entire South" with "1st run pictures and stage shows exclusively for colored people". The business was unsuccessful, and the building was purchased by Joe Goldstein's Panta Corporation in 1950 to be demolished for parking.
References
- White, Marjorie Longenecker (1977) Downtown Birmingham: Architectural and Historical Walking Tour Guide. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society.
- Hollis, Tim (2005) Birmingham's Theater and Retail District. Images of America series. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0738517771
- "Showplaces, Part 2" (August 16, 2006) Birmingham Rewound
External links
- Birmingham Theater at cinematreasures.org