Phipps Plaza 1 & 2 and Penthouse Theatre

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Uploaded on: January 14, 2023

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I can not say for sure that this is a picture of the original Phipps auditorium as there is nothing to definitely distinguish it from some other early Ultravision efforts of the ABC Southeastern Theaters company. Even if it is not Phipps, it looks exactly like it with its curved screen, Continental seating which offered plenty of room to walk between the rows, side aisles only with no aisles in the seating area itself to distract or take up prime seating area, and it’s almost wall to wall screen. Look closely and you can see where the last panel of drapes inside the exit doors is slightly offset. When the curtain opened it was stored behind those two panels.

For any movie with an overture or intermission there was a vertical rack of floodlights mounted behind those panels aimed to shine across the front of the curtain. As the music faded the lights would dim and the curtain opened. It was a great presentation which offered perfect sight lines from any of its 862 seats, but seldom used in those fading days when presentation was an important part of the movie going experience.

This was the configuration when the Phipps Plaza Theater opened prior to Christmas 1969 and with the exception of the rare times that the Atlanta Theater, the old Martin Cinerama downtown, ran a 70MM print, this place offered the best 35mm movie going experience in town. Those of us fortunate enough to see a 70MM Ultravision presentation here were treated to an experience only exceeded by true three screen Cinerama.

In the spring of 1975 this beautiful auditorium was gutted and a wall built down the center to create two 500 seat non Ultravision houses. In 1990 the entire wing of the mall containing the theaters was demolished and AMC opened a new 12plex, later increased to 14 in a different and newly expanded part of the mall. In 2019 the wing that was built on the footprint of this original theater was itself demolished for construction of a hotel and office building complex.