Senate Theater

dallasmovietheaters on October 6, 2024 at 7:42 am

The Senate Theatre was a silent African American cinema located at 1319 North Senate. The Senate was opened in December of 1910 by Charles Bernstein at the end of the nickelodeon era. Housed in an existing retail building, the Senate was designed for film exhibition with admission price just a nickel. James and Louis Hill, who had opened the Columbia Theatre on Indiana Avenue, took on the Senate in March of 1911.

The theater appears to have closed at the end of a ten-year lease in 1920. The building was located just west of the bustling Illinois Street commercial district that, unlike the declining Indiana Avenue business district, was still bustling. But the City of Indianapolis craftily drew up urban renewal plans in the late 1950s and early 1960s that would decimate the Illinois Street commercial district ultimately taking the former Senate Theatre building and all of its neighbors with it.