Sottile Theatre

It seems there were many theatres in Charleston on King Street! If this theatre is currently owned by the College of Charleston and is used by their theatre department perhaps this is the store front that I visited when in Charleston as I told by the gift shop owner that the auditorium still exists in the back and is being used by a local college. The owner showed me behind a small wall curtain the original glass-enclosed theatre poster inserts. I thought that she should at least be using them as display/advertisement areas, but didn't tell her so.

The Gloria Theater opened on August 19, 1927. This theater is now known as the Sottile Theater. Today this theater is a performing arts theater. Seating is listed as 785. Their website is here:
http://omt.cofc.edu/sottile/

A Moller organ Opus 4937 Size 3/14 was installed in the Gloria Theater in 1927 at a cost of $10375.00.

I am currently doing a project of the Gloria Theatre for a Historic Preservation project for the College of Charleston. If anyone has any personal memory of the theatre I would love to interview them.

Hkeyes@edisto.cofc.edu

This appears to be the only atmospheric theater left in the Carolina's. While not a full blown atmospheric it does have a large blue sky dome in the auditorium with electric stars and outdoor effects.

Here is a photo circa 1939:
http://scmovietheaters.com/chas_glo.html

In the early sixties, the Gloria was operated by the Pastime Amusement Company out of Charleston. President was Alberta Long. Other Pastime theaters in Charleston at that time were the American, Arcade, Garden and Riviera. Pastime also ran the Ashley Theater in St. Andrews Parish.

Listed in the 1936 AFI Yearbook as having 1,800 seats.

Status should be changed to "open"

The name of this theater should be updated to the Sottile Theatre. 785 seats.

This is what the Sottile Theater looks like.

According to Bowers' "Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments" page 551, "Albert Sottile" bought a Reproduco organ made by the Operators Piano Co.

Also, the "Palace" and "Lincoln" theatres in Charleston also had Reproducos. I could not find a page for those theatres, so I am including this info here for the time being.

The Lincoln was torn down in the 1980s. It was a theater for blacks in the Jim Crow era. It was a tiny place, relatively speaking. I never went inside, though. It had been abandoned for years.

The Gloria was the big, nice theater of downtown Charleston during the 1970s, when I went there regularly. It had long red curtains down the sides of the auditorium, probably hiding whatever was underneath. The stars in the ceiling are still there, from what I hear. It's a bigger theater than the Riviera, so there is something wrong about the seating capacity; it had to have been more than seven hundred. That may not include the smoking gallery, which had been closed for years.

This is a 2009 photo.

Another photo is here.

Here is an August 2009 photo.

MUST HAVE JUST BEEN HIT BY A TRUCK........

I've seen a few theater photos that showed their marquee having a close encounter of the wrong kind with a truck. I'm surprised that there isn't a code requiring the marquee to be a certain distance from the street. Other than the dent in the marquee, this looks like a nice theater.