Towne Theater
2300 N. Main Street,
High Point,
NC
27265
2300 N. Main Street,
High Point,
NC
27265
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The Towne Theatre became High Point’s first-ever ‘Lounging Chair Seating’ cinema, not to mention the town’s first suburban theatre. Located behind the K-Mart Shopping Center at the intersection of N. Main Street and Parris Avenue. The Towne Theatre was High Point’s most modern ultra design in architecture throughout. The Towne Theatre featured full stereophonic sound along with an ultra modern concession stand not to mention huge widescreen projection capable of showing both 35mm and 70mm films. As for the lounging chair seating, it was the only one of its kind when it opened, and all of High Point and surrounding areas of Guilford County loved it.
Owned and operated under Schneider-Merl Theatres, the Towne Theatre opened on February 5, 1968 with James Coburn in “The President’s Analyst”. The Towne Theatre remained a single screen cinema until the mid-1970’s when the original auditorium was split down the middle making it a twin cinema, under the new ownership of Martin Theatres.
By the time Carmike took over operations of the Towne Twin in the mid-1980’s, the cinema went from screening first-run movies to second-run movies, becoming a discount house until it was closed in the late-1990’s.
Contributed by
Ken McIntyre, raysson
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Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
This was part of the Schneider-Merl chain in the early eighties.
According to Bowers' “Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments” page 551, there was a “American” theatre in High Point equipped with a Reproduco organ made by the Operators Piano Co. I could not find a page for the American, so I am putting this here for the time being.
A February 1976 article in the High Point Enterprise stated that in the early and mid 1970s the Towne ran heavily edited versions of adult films such as “Deep Throat” and “Devil in Miss Jones”.
The Towne Theatre opened in the mid-1960’s as High Point’s first ever suburban theatre with a seating capacity of 760 seats. A lot of blockbuster movies played at the Towne Theatre including it’s original engagement March 22,1972 showing of THE GODFATHER.
kencmcintyre: The Towne Theatre ran adult films? I did my extensive research on this theatre,and to my knowledge it must have been running soft-porn films as late show entries long before Martin Theatres took over in the mid-1970’s. I’m from Durham,and I know one theatre in my area,the Yorktowne showed in its entirely the explicit “XXX” rated version of “Caligula”.
HISTORY:
Schneider-Merl: 1968-1975
Martin Theatres: 1975-1984,was twinned in 1976
Carmike Cinemas: 1984-closing