DeSoto Theater
868 Arkansas Street,
Memphis,
TN
38106
868 Arkansas Street,
Memphis,
TN
38106
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It appears that the commercial section of Fort Pickering, the town/suburb where the DeSoto was, has become industrial development and interstate highway. No trace of just about anything before the interstate construction.
Also, it was the so-so business at the DeSoto and Kemmons' knack for the theatre business that led to the construction of the Airway, Summer Drive-In, and the W C Handy. Kemmons had a theatre serving each racial community within a few blocks of one another. The Airway on Lamar and the Handy on Park.
The people at the Wilson Companies are cataloguing a lot of old photos for the first time. The very nice woman in charge of that said she will let me know if any turned up.
The stretch of Arkansas Avenue where the DeSoto Theatre was located has been wiped off the face of the earth, along with most of the neighborhood around it. Given the name, I suspect that the theater was at or near the corner of De Soto Street, several hundred feet north of the spot where Google Maps has placed the pin icon.
The obliteration took place sometime between 1958 and 1963, judging from a comparison of images from those years at Historic Aerials.