Lincoln Theatre

lostmemory on August 25, 2008 at 4:23 pm

Here is a photo of the Lincoln Theater.

lostmemory on February 13, 2007 at 3:52 pm

This is a 05/01/2004 article about the re-opening of the Lincoln Theater:

“By Paul Dellinger, The Roanoke Times, Va. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

May 1—MARION, Va. — A renovated movie theater, closed since 1977, will open to the public today and is already spurring new economic development in downtown Marion.

An open house at the restored Lincoln Theatre is set for noon to 6 p.m.

Some $1.8 million has been spent on the building to date.

Its total price tag will be closer to $2.15 million, said Mary Margaret Justis, executive director of the Lincoln Theatre Foundation, which is handling the project. “It’s still a work in progress,” she said.

Dominion Bank matched private donations to raise $20,000 for a group of residents to buy the building in 1988. The renovation has been under way since then but got a boost a little more than a year ago when Smyth County businesses and industries got behind it. Volunteers did much of the work and secured grants to help fund it.

Supporters of the project conferred with people in Blacksburg who had worked to reopen the Lyric Theatre, and in Roanoke where similar work was done on the Grandin Theatre, both of which now offer movies.

“We’re trying to be more of a performing arts center, a community meeting center,” Justis said. “But we also will eventually have movies a It will be second-run movies because we’re not for profit.”

The theater has already scheduled a number of live performances in the coming months, starting with the Western musical-comedy group, “Riders in the Sky,” at 3 p.m. May 16.

Justis said a Macado’s restaurant is going to locate in Marion, in a former post office building across Main Street from the Lincoln, partly because the theater is expected to increase downtown traffic. She said several stores have renovations under way for similar reasons, and a nearby hotel and apartment complex are being restored.

The theater project has been an economic development stimulus for downtown, she said.

The theater was built in 1929 by Charles Lincoln Sr., in the art deco style he had seen in New York theaters. He died before it opened, but his family completed it.

It showed movies continuously until 1973, then reopened briefly and closed again in 1977. A group of residents decided the theater could become a tourist attraction as well as a magnet for downtown and set about buying and restoring it.

Three of its distinctive murals have been restored. Three more remain to be done, when funding is available. Its 750 seats, dating from the 1940s, have been refurbished".

kencmcintyre on February 10, 2006 at 6:09 pm

Here is another link:
View link

RonnieHarrington on August 11, 2004 at 3:21 pm

Architect: Eubank & Caldwell, Roanoke, VA. The Lincoln was the flagship of the Lincoln Theatres Corporation in Southwest Virginia.