Dreamland Theatre
875 Broad Street,
Augusta,
GA
30901
875 Broad Street,
Augusta,
GA
30901
1 person
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 51 comments
dig up more,HENRY….lol.
Hi Mike. Yeah, they’re old and getting older. But better. Merry Christmas!
thanks Henry,these old stories are great on here..
I remember the Youth Revue (Review?), sponsored by Sancken’s Dairy. It was broadcast from the stage of the Miller Theater over radio station WRDW (I think; might have been WGAC), followed by a cartoon (Bugs Bunny, hopefully) and a feature film suitable for kids. Saturday mornings at the Miller was “prime time” growing up in Augusta in the 1940s!
Cable TV channel Turner Classic Movies has been showing episodes of the classic movie serials on saturdays at noon. Currently, it’s the 1937 15 chapter “Dick Tracy” from Republic Pictures. As a child in the forties and fifties I saw a lot of the serials at saturday matinees downtown. The program consisted of a serial chapter, b-western and a two reel comedy. The Modjeska showed both Columbia and Republic releases while the Rialto showed mostly Columbia product. The Imperial showed the highly touted original “Superman” serial from Columbia Pictures in 1948. That was the only serial I ever remember being shown there and none ever at the Miller during my childhood. The Miller did have a saturday matinee called the Sancken’s Youth Revue which was a kid’s talent contest broadcast live over radio and followed by a kiddie feature.
thanks guys any more Theatre stories on the other screens in Downtown.
It was great growing up in Augusta during the forties and fifties and I can remember in extreme detail much of it, but can hardly remember now what I am going into the next room for!
Aha, yes, I know where that is. Harrisburg GA not PA! There were trolley tracks still in upper Broad St. in that section of town, and all the way almost to Milledge Rd. at Lake Olmstead Park, where they turned into the curbing and disappeared. And yes, Georgia Power did run the bus system after the streetcars went out, and the garage was located as you said, near the head of Greene St. and the Archibald Butt Memorial Bridge. When I got a little older, but still a young lad, I would ride those busses on the Walton Way route from the Hill to the Broad St. business district to go to the Miller on Saturdays. And I used to pass by the bus garage when I rode with my grandparents in their ‘41 Ford Super Deluxe V8 coupe to take my Grandpa to work on Reynolds St. He was the bookkeeper for a cotton factor. I remember the cotton bales lining the curb on Reynolds in those years (late '40s-early '50s). (My g-parents lived at 2504 Helen St., which was unpaved then; their house stood where the Methodist Church parking lot is today, across the street from St. Mary’s-on-the-Hill school.) BTW, I can’t believe how Greene St. is messed up today with that dumb expressway!
The car was at the Crawford Ave. Baptist Church off of Broad St. in the Harrisburg mill section of town. If I remember correctly the Augusta transit system was run at that time by Georgia Power Co. with garages on 15th St. near the canal. At some point it was taken over by Augusta Coach Co. My grandfather told me that much of the streetcar tracks were taken up and scrapped for WW2 production.
That Sunday School must have been an “electrifying” experience! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Where was this church located? There were a couple of other retired trolley cars I remember, one used as a diner and the other at a private club outside of town. I think that the only car to survive today is in the Augusta Museum; it’s been heavily (and inauthentically) restored, of a type known to us trolley nuts as a single-truck Birney car.
I remember those street car tracks, too.(born 1940). My church had a retired one which was used as a Sunday school room.
When I was growing up in Augusta in the 1940s, it was my dad who told me that the burned out empty shell at the corner of 9th and Broad had been a theater, long before my time (b. 1941). For as long as I can remember, into the ‘50s at least and maybe into the '60s as well, those empty walls stood there, on the same side of Broad as Bowen Bros. hardware in the next block.
I remember other aspects of an earlier time in Augusta, for example, the streetcar tracks that ran in the middle of Broad St. and along 13th to Walton Way and up the Hill, past the Arsenal and onto Monte Sano Ave. (no rails there, but the scars in the brick, at that time, paving showed where they had run). The streetcars last ran in Augusta in 1937, so I never saw them, but I lived in New Orleans in the mid-‘50s and rode them there many times. I think that all evidence of the streetcar system has now been erased or covered over in Augusta.
Thanks Joe.
Thanks for fixing my mistake in updating Street View. So far, this is the only one I’ve updated to the wrong location, but it was still a dumb move.
I found a second mention of the Superba Theatre in The Moving Picture World, this from the issue of September 19, 1908:
I’ve found a couple of references to Frank and Hubert Bandy, as operators of the Liberty Theatre in Savannah and the Lyric Theatre in Macon. Presumably the Mr. Bandy operating the Superba was one or the other of them.According to “Entertainment in Augusta,” the address of the Dreamland Theatre was 879 Broad Street. That address is currently listed on the Internet as the location of Wheels Corner Pub, a bicycle-themed bar. There’s a mural featuring bicycles on the 9th Street side of the building.
think your right.It was long gone before I was born.
I think I just updated Street View for this theater to the wrong location. I was going by this street diagram in the book “Entertainment in Augusta,” and it looked like the Dreamland had been on the southwest corner of 9th and Broad. I’ve now realized that the diagram is inverted from the usual map position, so it has north at the bottom instead of the top. That means the Dreamland was actually on the northeast corner of 9th and Broad.
I have a old Benton Brothers film book i got out of the old Regency Exchange in Augusta,Wish I would have kept more thru the years, Still see BENTON BROTHERS trucks over town.
Back to memory lane…. Does anyone remember the old Benton Bros. Film Express trucks? They would pickup/deliver and transport films to all the Augusta theaters from the Atlanta exchanges in their bright yellow short body trucks and were always parked on Broad St. Also, how about the original 1934 Ford Bonnie and Clyde death car that toured with a crime exploitation film “Killers All” that played the Modjeska and Rialto in the 1950’s? The car and film were owned by Ted Toddy an Atlanta distributor of primarily black films. The car is now on display in a Nevada casino.
You’re welcome. I have lots of memories, I just can’t always remember what they are…. ;o)
Thanks for the memories WHP and Henrey41.
Henry 41,
Haverty’s was further up the block. The store I mentioned was W. F. Bentley & Son. Yep, the escalator only went up. It’s truly amazing what sticks in these old brain memory cells when I can’t remember what I did yesterday. When I was really young there was an old Italian organ grinder with a monkey who worked that corner of 9th and Broad across from the Dreamland.
WHP, I have to add this: your statement about the first electric eye door openers agrees with my own memory, and also the escalator. Note the singular: the escalator was only on the “up” side; the “down” side was still stairs! This may have changed later.
Bob Smith.ACCU-BOB of Channel 12 News was our relief operator at ABC THEATRES and was a BIG model Train Fan.You guys might know him.he retired from NEWS12 a year or so ago.
Thanks, WHP! Yes, I should have remembered that it was Bowen Brothers hardware (the brothers were Dudley, Sr., father of my grammar school chum, and Charles, IIRC)—-apologies for the brain fart, it’s been a long time since those happy years! Was that furniture store called Haverty’s, or was that somewhere else along Broad?