World Theatre
1229 Dorr Street,
Toledo,
OH
43607
1229 Dorr Street,
Toledo,
OH
43607
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The World opened in 1923 with seating for 1244 patrons. The theatre was located on Dorr Street at North Detroit Street. It was styled in Spanish Colonial Revival. The World closed in 1957 and has since been demolished.
Contributed by
Chuck
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Recent comments (view all 8 comments)
1950 Photo of the World Theatre.
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A Barton theater organ size 3/8 was installed in the World Theater in 1920.
I wonder if that 1920 Barton 3/8 was not one of those early jobs with the divided Solo/Third manual.
I checked the listing again for this theater and you are correct Tom. Under miscellaneous it reads “Divided Manual”.
Very good. Some of those organs were like that. It seems to me one of the early Chicago radio station Bartons was also a divided manual job. I think it was an early studio instrument for either WBBM or WGN. WGN eventually had a Wurlitzer/Kimball but an earlier organ was a Barton. I do not know if any of these divided manual Barton organs are still around or not. I have two Wurlitzers here that have a “divided manual”, but this was for a Concert Roll player—even though the manual has stops for both bass and treble parts of the manual.
In the mid 70’s the World was re-named the Sepia Theatre and was operated by a small group of independent community minded individuals. As the Sepia, it programmed double features mostly action flicks.
The architectural firm was C. Howard Crane of Detroit, Michigan. I have the full plans of the building. The Sepia Arts Theatre was the full name of the operation in the 1970’s. They actually were fairly successful with programing and live events as well. The downfall came from the same company producing a feature film entitled “The Last Jesus” in New York City, production costs mounted and ultimately the film lab refused to develop any more film and kept the stock that was already shot. One of the principals of the Sepia Arts was a neighbor and before he passed away 20 years ago I asked what the plot of the movie was and even he was not sure. The film was about 40 years ago, so has nothing to do with any book written since or the Kirk Franklin song.
Now I find in the April 6, 1972 issue of Jet Magazine that “The Last Jesus” is a “semi-musical” by South African director J T Teko Menong. It was to star Kim Weston and “deal with problems as they are”. The magazine stated it was to be in Toledo, but that is where the investors were, not the filming. just a one sentence note of a project never completed.