Garden Theatre
1187 N. High Street,
Columbus,
OH
43201
1187 N. High Street,
Columbus,
OH
43201
6 people
favorited this theater
Located in the Victorian Village area. The Garden Theatre was operating prior to 1941, and had a capacity for 643. After closing as a movie theatre, it became a burlesque venue. In recent years it has been a church.
In September 2011, it reopened as a live performance venue, also with movie use and as a wedding venue. Currently seating 138, money is being raised for further renovations and to increase the seating capacity to 300.
Contributed by
moviemad4life
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Recent comments (view all 20 comments)
The Garden and other OSU-area movie theatres are described on this page: University District History: 100 Years of University District Theatres. The page says that the theatre actually contained an indoor garden.
Playing April 19, 1974- “Karate Killer” and “From China with Death.” Double feature from the theater’s days as a grindhouse in a slum neighborhood.
Area has since gentrified massively.
The Garden Theatre’s sign will be lit this weekend for the first time in 30 years. It’s the future home of the new Short North Stage theater troupe. http://www.theotherpaper.com/entertainment/fine_arts/article_83cb4152-eaaf-11e0-a15d-001cc4c002e0.html
Video of Garden Theater Sign being relit http://youtu.be/L_BSIdOBhEM
This is great news!
Nice to see the GARDEN back in business. This is a very difficult theatre to research as it had many openings/closings over the years and went in and out of porn screening for awhile.
Why is the capacity reduced from the original 643? Has a balcony been removed?
According to this article, apparently the balcony is gone:
http://www.columbusunderground.com/short-north-stage-to-reopen-garden-theatre-as-arts-venue-in-2012
“The auditorium, though, has largely been gutted. The seats were removed long ago and the balcony was torn down. The classic proscenium is in shabby shape. But the potential is enormous…[We can] convert the Garden into a state-of-the-art performance space with almost 300 seats…During the first phase we will create a 99-seat house with a platform stage within the larger auditorium. This will enable us to offer small-scale performances relatively soon—perhaps by this fall.”
Sounds a little like what went down with the former Culver theatre, which is now the Kirk Douglas theatre in Culver City – it will have a mainstage up front, but for the time being, they’re doing live stuff in a 99-seat room sitting at the back of the auditorium.
I’m sorry, that assessment was wrong: it will be nothing like the old Culver – there will be one performance space, not two. Reading more carefully, what I should have said is that right now, they have only installed 99 seats in the auditorium while they go about the renovations, and that 300 seats will be the ultimate capacity of the room when it is finished.
So happy to see this theater put to use. It has been sitting there idle for many years. I’ve always wondered what it looked like inside. The theater was still open when I moved to town, but was showing porn then so I never did get inside. A shame the balcony is gone. A local theater company put on a production of Follies recently. I hope they make a go of it. Parking is a real problem in that area………