Park Theatre, owned by Cumberland Amusement Company and designed by Speight out of Nashville, TN, had its Grand Opening October 18, 1939 at 6:30 PM. The building, which cost $50,000 contained the 1000 seat theatre (265 seats in the balcony, 735 on the main floor), and a resturant on each side. The 1800 visitors opening night seemed to assure success for movies and live events on stage. On September 17, 1947, a fire broke out in the stage area burning three and a half hours. The theatre was restored while adding additional seating and was reopened to another packed house on July 18, 1948. In the mid-50s with the advent of Cinema-Scope, the “House Beautiful”, as the Park was known, was renovated again to add the Cinema-Scope Screen and this downsized the seating back to 1000 seats, which were kept until it closed the second week of September in 1986, the cartoon movie Transformers being the last images on the massive screen. Our Park Theatre Group is currently working to restore the Neo-Classical styled Park Theatre into a multi-purpose facility that retains the best of its heritage while offering a venue for live events as well as classic movies or other on screen efforts.
Park Theatre, owned by Cumberland Amusement Company and designed by Speight out of Nashville, TN, had its Grand Opening October 18, 1939 at 6:30 PM. The building, which cost $50,000 contained the 1000 seat theatre (265 seats in the balcony, 735 on the main floor), and a resturant on each side. The 1800 visitors opening night seemed to assure success for movies and live events on stage. On September 17, 1947, a fire broke out in the stage area burning three and a half hours. The theatre was restored while adding additional seating and was reopened to another packed house on July 18, 1948. In the mid-50s with the advent of Cinema-Scope, the “House Beautiful”, as the Park was known, was renovated again to add the Cinema-Scope Screen and this downsized the seating back to 1000 seats, which were kept until it closed the second week of September in 1986, the cartoon movie Transformers being the last images on the massive screen. Our Park Theatre Group is currently working to restore the Neo-Classical styled Park Theatre into a multi-purpose facility that retains the best of its heritage while offering a venue for live events as well as classic movies or other on screen efforts.