Greenland Theatre

I believe the correct name of this house is not Greenville Theatre (which wouldn’t make sense in a town called Greensboro) but Greenland Theatre. The building was probably built in 1940-41, replacing an earlier house of the same name, and is at 124 S. Main Street, currently occupied by a Chinese restaurant called (rather unimaginatively) the China Restaurant.

This web page gives a sketchy bit of history up to 1935, when the theater was rebuilt, burned down a short time later, then was rebuilt again. The 1940 rebuild must have been at least the third, and it was larger than the earlier iterations. Charles S. Aiken’s book The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War has a couple of paragraphs about the opening of the house in January, 1941, saying that there were 500 seats for whites on the main floor and 160 additional seats in the segregated balcony.

This 1941 photo from the Library of Congress shows the Streamline Modern theater before the building got the fake Colonial front and mansard it now sports.

The name Greenland Theatre goes back at least as early as 1917 in Greensboro, when it was mentioned in the October 20 issue of Motography. The planning of the 1940 rebuild was noted in this item from the October 11 issue of The Film Daily:

“Reynolds-Boswell To Build

“Greensboro, Ga. — J. M. Reynolds. Jr., and W. R. Boswell, operators of the Greenland theater here, will erect a new theater with a seating capacity of 660.”