Chester Theater
163 Main Street,
Chester,
SC
29706
163 Main Street,
Chester,
SC
29706
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This was the second Chester Theater to operate in Chester, SC. It was opened on September 29, 1939 with 712-seats. It was part of the Stewart & Everett chain in the 1960’s and the seating capacity was reduced to 490-seats.
Contributed by
Ken McIntyre
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
The Chester Theatre was a very nice theatre for a city of this size (about 7000). The seating of 712 seems about right. The aisles were steep, giving it somewhat the feel to today’s stadium seating. The screen was larger than most theatres in cities of this size. I lived about 30 miles away in the early 1960’s, and attended this theatre two or three times. I am not sure that the above address is correct. If you Google 109 Hwy 9 Business (Main St.), I thought it was on the vacant lot beside Kimbrell’s Furniture.
Fred Powell launched the Chester in 1941 very briefly as part of his Cherokee Theatre Circuit. It then became part of his Powell and Everett Circuit that then became the Stewart and Powell Circuit post-Fred Powell. Pictures at opening in photos section.
This is the second out of two Chester Theatres in downtown Chester. The first Chester Theatre was devastated in a fire on July 29, 1939. Powell spent $55,000 on the second theater building on 163 Main just across the street from the then-Post Office on September 29 of that same year.
The Chester Theatre originally housed 712 seats, but by the mid-1970s according to a May 1976 article about the “then-new” Cinema Twin being constructed at the People’s Plaza Shopping Center, the Chester Theatre during its final years of operation did had a downgrade with its capacity to 490 (which occur sometime in the early-1970s).
The Chester Theatre closed its doors for the final time on June 3, 1976 with “Nashville Girl”, leaving the Chester Drive-In the only theater in town for a time. Unfortunately, the drive-in at the time mainly focused towards adult fare with some mainstream films being partially added to its lineup, meaning that stuff you see previously at the former first-run Chester Theatre were really hard to catch in Chester, otherwise people have to travel 15 miles north to see first-run movies in Rock Hill. This lasted until the launch of the Cinema Twin on November 30, 1976. Although the first-run stuff brought back to Chester after the launch of the twin, people who wanted to see selected mainstream titles throughout the years could either go to the Cinema Twin in Chester, or still go back up again to Rock Hill (via the Cherry Road Cinema 4 [later 7], Pix Theatre, or the Oakland Avenue Cinema).
Last managed by Terry Owens who later opened the Cinema Twin a few miles away.