Bonita Theatre
The Bonita Theater was a small theater located at 1923 3rd Avenue North. It was constructed in 1906. Edward H. Colley advertised the opening of the new theater in August 1909, promising a program of the best moving pictures and music, with no vaudeville acts. The exterior was painted in white enamel and illuminated by hundreds of light bulbs. The interior was outfitted with a large suction fan overhead to keep the air circulating in the auditorium.
Colley sold the business to his former partner Hollis Newsome in 1913. Newsome converted it into the Rialto Theatre in 1915.
The Rialto closed in the 1930s, a victim of the Great Depression. The building was next inhabited by the Guarantee Shoe Company, which built a new floor level above the original sloped floor and added Art Deco styled partitions and stairs. In the 1980s, it housed the Famous Shoe Bar. In 1985 the building was documented as a contributing structure to the first boundary increase of the Downtown Birmingham Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.
By 2004 the building, having been vacant for at least a decade when it had housed "Gift World", was back up for sale. It was purchased by Sam and Gwyn Moore and their son and daughter-in-law Chad and Chesney for use as a showroom for their office furniture company Moore Solutions and as a loft residence for the younger couple. The renovations to the building were documented online in a blog format.
The building currently houses Moore Solutions commercial furnishings showroom on the ground floor.
References
- "New Picture Show Opens Monday." (August 14, 1909) The Birmingham News, p. 15
- Wilkinson, Kaija (January 27, 2006) "Activity reverses years of decline." Birmingham Business Journal
- "Newest and Handsomest of Newsome's Theaters Will Be Opened Tomorrow" (December 24, 1915) The Birmingham News
External links
- The Rialto Theatre Renovation website