Rex Theatre

Joe Vogel on May 12, 2016 at 2:46 pm

I found one source, an elderly resident of Minden named Juanita Agan, who said in an article published (or more likely re-published) in the October 7, 2015, issue of the Minden Press-Herald that the Brownie was a different theater than the Rex. She recalls “ I remember it as the Scout Theatre, others remember further back when it was called the Brownie Theatre or later it was the Tower Theater.”

The Rex was in a building that was built in 1902 as the First Baptist Church. This Rex was not the first of the name, but the second. According to this web page Edgar Hand owned the original Rex Theatre on Pearl Street. In the early 1940s it was taken over by Joy Houck, remodeled and renamed the Joy Theatre, and Hand moved the Rex to its second location. The page is probably wrong about the time of the move, as there are several sources saying that the second Rex was in operation in the 1930s. The photo of the Rex on this page is dated 1937. A slightly later photo in John A. Agan’s book Lost Minden shows an updated theater, probably in 1939 or 1940, decorated for the local premier of Gone With the Wind (on page 17 of the Google Books preview.)

I’m not sure when the second Rex closed, but at some point it was demolished to provide parking space for the Minden Medical Center.

The address 203 N. Broadway is obsolete. At some point Minden reassigned addresses, and the site of the Rex is now in the 800 block, though I don’t know exactly where. It must have been in the vicinity of a low brick building called the Minden Medical Pavilion, which is apparently an annex to the medical center, but which has a Morrell Street address.