Arcade Theater

dallasmovietheaters on May 31, 2026 at 4:01 am

The Arcade opened September 26, 1910 with Mr. and Mrs. Sydney in the live play, “Billy.” Designed as an opera house, the venue scuffled in the town of 11,500. In late August 1912, Josiah Pearce & Sons, an early New Orleans circuit of movie theaters, closed deals in Houston and here to convert failing opera houses into movie theaters with a live vaudeville component. It relaunched for films on September 2, 1912 with Mary Pickford in “An Indian Summer,” supported by “The Greed for Gold” and Francesca Bertini in “The Wandering Minstrel.”

Southern Amusements took on the venue and dominated the growing Lake Charles movie marketplace with the four major movie theatres in 1916. A fatal $1 million fire in Lake Charles on December 1, 1925 likely should have ended the Arcade save the efforts of the local firefighting team - despite losing three firefighters that day. The theatre reopened quickly and Southern Amusement would convert the theaters to sound later in the decade. By the 1950s, Southern had the Paramount, the Arcade, the Lake and both the Round-Up and Surf drive-ins. The Paramount was converted to widescreen for presenting CinemaScope titles in 1954 and the fading Arcade was not. It was a portent of things to come.

An exposé by one of the local newspapers questioned what appeared to be overly favorable taxing valuations for the aging theaters. While good journalism, a more contemporary view would suggest that the valuations of the late 1950s were based on a combination of the fading prospects for dying movie theaters and the tremendous costs associated with redeveloping them for other retail uses. The combination of drive-ins and suburban theaters offering newer technology, better seating and ample free parking had pretty much decimated downtown movie theaters - especially in a growing city like Lake Charles.

The Arcade fit the bill as Southern closed the Arcade at the end of lease on March 30, 1956 with “Lady & the Tramp.” The theatre was dormant until used by a non-profit Lake Charles Little Theatre beginning December of 1960 for stage plays. That lasted regularly until the April 30, 1967 staging of “Alice!” As part of the Downtown Mall urban renewal, the theatre had many fewer events. But the Arcade’s listing in 1978 on the National Register of Historic Places helped secure a renovation in the mid-1980s.

On Thanksgiving Day 1985 - days prior to the 60th Anniversary of the fatal fire that could have ended the Arcade in 1925, two fire calls were placed. The first fire was quickly extinguished. The second took out the theatre which was undergoing renovations. The venue was delisted on July 22, 2016 but the Arcade Theatre, Miller Building, the Paramount and the Weber Building are commemorated by a historical marker in honor of the fallen building.