Majestic Theatre
103 3rd Street South,
Clarksville,
TN
37040
103 3rd Street South,
Clarksville,
TN
37040
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Given how raw the empty hole still looks, this may have been lost in the 1999 tornado.
Although we have the seating capacity of the Majestic listed as 250, period sources indicate that the house opened with about 600 seats. Construction journals said the lot was 40x175 feet, and the theater had a balcony as well as a large stage. The seating capacity might have been reduced later, but if the figure 250 comes from the FDY I suspect that an inept typesetter might have carelessly transposed the 2 and the 5, and the house actually had 520 seats during its later years.
The single-story building next door (105 S. Third) to the Majestic’s site looks to be modern construction in a period style, rather than a renovation of an older building, and I suspect that part of that building occupies part of the Majestic’s site. In Google street view the vacant lot looks to be only about 25 feet wide.
The May 13, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World said that the Crescent Amusement Company planned to replace its Elite Theatre in Clarksville with a new house at Third and Franklin Streets. The new house might have been the Majestic. The April 29 issue of Domestic Engineering had said that architects Marr & Holman were preparing plans for a theater at Clarksville for the Crescent Amusement Company.
While I haven’t found any source confirming that this project was the Majestic, the Majestic was the only theater near the intersection of Third and Franklin other than the first and second Capitol Theatres, and the first Capitol wasn’t built until 1928.
The Majestic may have used a Reproduco, which was an automatic piano with three ranks of organ pipes.