Reda Theater

The Reada Theatre opened on March 4, 1948 with a Ben Pobbocki & Sons of Milwaukee attractor, interior design by Knoxville Scenic Studios and Abbott and Costello playing on the big screen. It closed on December 24, 1972 with “Brother of the Wind.” A three year renovation project fell short and the building was razed in May of 1990.

The address of this theater was approximately 205 North Main Street, London, KY (definitely in the odd 200s). The brick building across the side street (on the left side of the photo) is the north wall of what was Weaver’s Hot Dogs (the building was destroyed by fire in February 2015), located at 131 North Main Street, on the corner of North Main and what used to be West 6th (which is the one-way side street going down behind the theater in the photo). West 6th as it appears in the photo no longer exists, and did not exist at the time of the Weaver’s fire; there was a parking lot that nestled right up to the Weaver structure at the time of the fire. The parking lot is still there, and on some maps, the ingress and egress to the parking area is marked as West 6th, although it is a different alignment from the time of the Reda Theater; parking lot access is approximately where the box office was.