Dixie Theatre
206 E. Main Street,
McMinnville,
TN
37110
206 E. Main Street,
McMinnville,
TN
37110
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Map
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Crescent Amusement Co.
Nearby Theaters
No theaters found within 30 miles
The Dixie Theatre was opened prior to 1926 when it was operating as an African-American movie theatre. By 1941 it was operated by the Cumberland Amusement Co., a subsidiary of the Crescent Amusement Co. out of Nashville, TN. The Dixie Theatre was still open in 1957.
Contributed by
Ken Roe
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Recent comments (view all 2 comments)
It appears the address was likely 206 E. Main Street. It has since been demolished and the First National Bank next door to the right expanded onto it’s property and a neighboring building to the bank’s left. The 1946 photo shows only two columns on the bank, and today there are six via street view, which shows the same buildings to it’s left as in a 1930s photo in the book Warren County by Cody Prince & Krystal Tanner. Including a 6 window former J.C. Penney 3 doors to the left which is still standing. It was also open much earlier than the 1930s. As I’ve added an early 1900s photo of the same view as the 1946 photo.
Address was 204, at least originally. The bank building at 200-202 was built in 1923, and the theater seems to have been part of that structure, although styled differently. It’s a bit hard to match the Sanborn map with the photos, but what I think the newer photo shows is that the theater later expanded into number 206, which was a pre-1887 commercial building, and is shown as a bank on the 1926 map. The older photo can’t be any earlier than 1923.
Anyway, the 1926 map definitely shows the theater as a smaller space in the new building, with a rectangular wooden canopy on the front that looks like what we have in the older photo. At that time, the balcony was a tiny flat-fronted space that only went perhaps 20' into the auditorium starting from the front wall.