Loew's Ames Theater

This beautiful neighborhood theater opened in 1949, across a driveway from the Northtown shopping center on North Main Street, in Dayton. It was opened by an independent operator and ran the theater until around 1967, when, as the story goes, the theater was sold away from his family due to the marriage of the son who married outside the religion.

The theater was bought by Loew’s and they remodeled the theater in a green, purple and blue motif. The theater played big first runs and had exclusive Dayton runs of “The Graduate” and “Romeo and Juliet”, to name a few. Loew’s then split it by putting a wall down the middle of the auditorium for the twin, leaving the small screens at the front of two narrow auditoriums.

Loew’s seems to have lost faith in the operation and turned the theater sub run at an 80 cent admission. In 1986, Loew’s closed this theater, and it became a camera shop.

Recent comments (view all 22 comments)

Coate on March 22, 2010 at 3:49 pm

Wow, an apology from Chuck for an error! Maybe there’s hope he will apologize for the countless other errors he’s made. Better yet, one can hope he will stop posting altogether.

kencmcintyre on March 22, 2010 at 4:05 pm

That’s a little harsh, isn’t it? I’ve made plenty of errors myself. No one is getting paid to do this.

Chuck1231 on March 22, 2010 at 8:24 pm

Thanks Ken, As I was told to just ignore his crude comments and continue as I always have.

Mark_L on March 22, 2010 at 8:54 pm

Chuck1231 does not provide contact information, so I must post this publicly here.

Chuck, while I applaud your enthusiasm for posting at this site, quite a few of your posts have contained errors…errors that could be corrected by a bit of additional research.

Chuck or anyone else may contact me (see my profile) and I will be happy to share with you some of my sources and search techniques. They aren’t perfect, but they can catch some of the problems.

We all benefit when correct data is posted here. Please everyone try to be as accurate as possible with your information.

Now, back to a discussion of the Loew’s Ames.

Chuck1231 on March 23, 2010 at 7:09 am

Mark, you can send me an email, go to the membership page and click email by my name and you can send me an email.

Bill Eichelberger on September 19, 2010 at 4:28 am

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyum/4999246073/
View link
View link

CSWalczak on September 19, 2010 at 8:43 am

“Green, purple, and blue motif” ? Apparently then Loew’s used this bilious color scheme for more than one of their theaters then. Loew’s East in the Cleveland suburb of Richmond Heights had the same decor, and if memory serves, the green was more like chartreuse and purple more like lavender. I guess it was “mod” when these color scheme was used, but boy, did it quickly look dated and dumb.

TLSLOEWS on September 26, 2010 at 5:48 am

They most likely bought a lot of those colors paint and had to use them somewhere.Just a joke!Maybe.“MOD MOTIF”.

Chuck1231 on November 14, 2010 at 8:39 am

More current photo of the Loew’s Ames Theatre, click to enlarge.
http://www.landmarkhunter.com/197871-ames-theater/

Mike Rogers on January 14, 2011 at 1:57 am

Pretty plain,dull looking theatre to me .No jazz.Thanks for the pictures.