Dixie Theatre

dallasmovietheaters on March 19, 2020 at 10:03 am

The Victoria Theater launched in 1910 catering to an African American audience. The Victoria likely brokered a 20-year lease closing as a silent theater. The Victoria joined the Pekin Theater, the Roosevelt and the Lincoln Theater in the West End as the city’s most popular African American movie houses.

The Dixie Theater Circuit took on the location – along with two other area theater locations – equipping the theater for sound and changing the Victoria’s name to the Dixie. This leasing cycle which was likely 30 years. The Pekin, Roosevelt, and the Lincoln would be targeted as the old west end of Cincinnati was largely obliterated by the construction of the massive interchange of Interstate Highways 71 and 75. That fundamentally wiped out a core of African American nightlife and retail history.

The Dixie, however, soldiered on with its next operator as the Associated Theatres of Cincinnati. In 1962, a rumor that a proposed Convention Center would decimate the African American retail block – including the taking out the 50-year old Dixie Theater – gained traction. By 1964, it had become reality and the block along with the Dixie would be razed.

In 1968, the city’s Convention Center opened and was still there under a new name in the 2020s.