East Point Theatre
1493 Jefferson Avenue,
East Point,
GA
30344
1493 Jefferson Avenue,
East Point,
GA
30344
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Showing 26 - 36 of 36 comments
Perfect! It’s yesterday once more.
Here is a link to see what the east point theater looked like:
http://bellsouthpwp.net/t/o/tomvason/Theatre.jpg
I grew up down the street form the old East Point theater. My parents still own a house on Jefferson Ave. The old address of the theater appears to be correct 116 Jefferson because we still have an old address of 707 that is barely visable on top of the porch. The theater burned as well as the surrounding buildings in the late 1980’s, probably around 1988. They demolished the old Russell High School across the street to make way for Tri-Cities High school and at the same time and closed the road that connected Jefferson ave. with main St. The whole block was then leveled except one house that is a now a daycare center and Byran Park. Now it is a baseball and softball field with extra parking for the High School. It was a childhood dream to restore that theater, but It will not happen. I found an old picture but the site doesn’t allow pictures because of needed updates I will post one when the problem is fixed.
The Russell was always on Jefferson Avenue. The only thing that makes sense is that when the East Point Theater on Church Street closed the Russell Theater became the East Point Theater. I wasn’t living in East Point in the 1960s so I don’t know this for sure but I’ll bet that’s the case.
Russell High School was also across the street from the East Point. Just to the west of the East Point Theatre and across the railroad tracks was Main Street (you probably recall there was a Krystal Hamburger restaurant at this junction). Just a couple of blocks south, Main St splits off onto Church St and East Point St. Is it possible that the Russell was on Church St?
I grew up in East Point in the 1940s and ‘50s, and at that time there were 3 theaters; the Russell on Jefferson Ave across from Russell High, the East Point on Church Street near the intersection with Main Street, and the Fairfax on Main Street near the Post Office. The Fairfax was the only theater that admitted blacks. They used a separate ticket office on the side of the building and then used a set of outside stairs to gain access to the balcony.
Yes, the Jefferson Avenue location is correct for the East Point Theater. Circa 1960, I attended the theater several times, but not on a regular basis. So, I never knew it by any other name than the East Point. In the early 1980’s, I stopped by the theater to take a look. Apparently, it had been closed up for quite some time. Circa 1990, I had a look at the location while I was traveling on a MARTA elevated train. The theater and the block had already been torn down.
The Fairfax Theater was closed by the time I became acquainted with East Point. The 1953 Atlanta Telephone Directory simply lists the address of the Fairfax as East Point. So, I can’t shed any light on its exact street address. The Fairfax was one of a group of Atlanta neighborhood theaters that I never actually attended, or in some cases never knew of at all.
Theaters that I never knew included the American, 771 Marietta Street, NW; the Brookhaven, 4012 Peachtree Road, NE; the Cameo, 61 Peachtree Street (downtown); the Cascade, 1340 Gordon Street, SW (near the juncture of Cascade Road); the Empire, 42 Georgia Avenue, SW (near present day Turner Field); the Fulton 761 S. Central Avenue, SW; and the Memorial, 657 Memorial Drive, SE (in the vicinity of Oakland Cemetary).
Theaters that I was aware of, but never had the chance to attend, included the DeKalb, 130 E. Ponce de Leon Avenue, NE (on the square in Decatur); Little Five Points 1103 Euclid Avenue, NE; and the West End, 595 Lee Street, SW (in West End). They were already closed up at the time I became aware of them. To the best of my knowledge, the only ones left standing are the Little Five Points (now known as the Seven Stages) and the Fulton (or so I gather from the listing on this site).
Remember that these theaters were in business in the days of racial segregation. There was another group of neighborhood theaters referred to as “Colored Theaters,” which served the African-American community in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Obviously, I am white. With 20/20 hindsight I am rather appalled that I grew up in a segregated society, but that’s another story.
All in all, the Atlanta area had about three dozen hardtop neighborhood theaters in the early 1950’s. Remember, the Atlanta area has changed drastically in the last 50 years. Yes, street names and street numbers have been changed. Apart from that, the entire “lay of the land” can look signifigantly different when you haven’t visited the city for a few years. So, even given the original street addresses, it can be difficult to determine where these long gone theaters originally stood.
Thank you for your findings and comments. My lament is not with any individual or resource, but with the lack of a standard in street addressing. This matter with the East Point is by no means unique. I have encountered incidences in which both the street number and street name have changed, but the all the structures residing on the spot remain. It’s in incidence like these one gains an understanding of like Melville’s Billy Budd emotion upon the discover that his map, though a true and precise guide at the time it was written, could provide no direction to the subsequent generations which had come of age since its initial release. In my own research, I go with the current address (for geo coding) and record any other addresses under historical data. Hopefully this geo-coding will spare future generations of budding researchers of having to incur this dilemma.
Hi Jack,
Not doubting your local knowledge or the ‘natives’ but just to clarify a point. The F.D.Y. 1950 lists the Fairfax Theatre (1,000 seats) as being located at 211 S. Main Street.
I know that F.D.Y information can be un-reliable at times, but it is a good overall research tool. ie. In the 1941 and 1943 editions the East Point Theatre is listed as having 750 seats with the Russell just getting a listing with no further info (Read into that, that it was a new theatre where details hadn’t been provided, or it was the same theatre with a change of name and sloppy editing had let it go through twice). I think we will go with the latter on that.
The Fairfax seating capacity is given as 400 in the 1940’s editions of F.D.Y. but rises to 1,000 by 1950! As someone who does not know the area, or the buildings first hand I will leave this matter to your better judgement to clarify the situation. I hope thats ok with you?
This thing with the renumbering of streets is an on going hassle. I was a regular patron of the East Point from the early 1960s up until it was leveled. When I came upon this disparity of address, I yanked up every directory I could find during a last visit to Atlanta a few weeks ago and checked it our with a couple of area natives. Consensus at this point is for the 1493 Jefferson. Jefferson Ave is only a couple of miles long and runs from 1071 to 1598, nothing in the 3 digits range. The natives say that the town only had 2 theatres: Fairfax and the Russell (aka East Point) and think that the Church St address might belong to the Fairfax.
Jack;
Listed as the Russell Theatre in Film Daily Yearbook’s 1941-1950 (that I have) with a seating capacity of 660. The address given is 116 Jefferson Avenue (has there been a re-numbering?).
Also listed in F.D.Y. 1941-1950 is an East Point Theatre, 314 N. Church Street with 750 seats. Seems to me these are two different theatres.