Quincy Music Theatre

I took a few more pictures of the Leaf today. You’ll notice two separates sets of doors. The doors on the left were for white patrons and led straight into the auditorium, while the doors on the right led black patrons into the balcony.

Here are my pictures from January 2011.

Another 2009 photo of the former Leaf Theatre.
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Thanks. I was most likely going to be in the Quincy area tomorrow and thought I would try and check them out. I’ll poke around downtown, I guess.

Joe, do you have any more information on the Shaw, Roxy, and drive-in? I can’t seem to find anything.

The Leaf Theatre opened on October 24, 1949, with 1022 seats- 700 on the main floor and 322 in a segregated balcony. The house was operated by Interstate Enterprises, according to items in Boxoffice Magazine on November 5 and November 19, 1949. These items attribute the design of the theater to Prentiss Huddleston & Associates, Tallahassee.

An Item in 1947 said that Kemp, Bunch & Jackson would design the new theater at Quincy, with Prentiss Huddleston as a local associate architect. A September, 1948 item names Prentiss Huddleston as the lead architect of the Leaf Theatre, with Kemp, Bunch & Jackson as the associated architects. The items about the opening don’t mention Kemp, Bunch & Jackson at all, so I don’t know how much, if any, input that firm had in the final design of the Leaf Theatre.

The plans had already been revised several times by early 1948, according to an item in Boxoffice of January 24 that year, due to repeated refusal by government authorities to issue a permit for construction of the theater as designed.

Interstate Enterprises, a company with theaters in Georgia and Florida, not to be confused with Texas-based Interstate Theatres, already operated two other theaters in Quincy, the Shaw and the Roxy, and later opened a drive-in there as well.

Some photos are here along with some information about the alleged ghost. (sometimes the link has to be clicked more than once to get it to load)

More photos of the Leaf Theater can be seen here.