Star Theatre
104 E. Washington Street,
Rockingham,
NC
28379
104 E. Washington Street,
Rockingham,
NC
28379
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The correct address is 104 E. Washington (I’m not sure where I got west in my earlier comment. I might have been drunk that night.) Also, the Star is not one of the two movie theater names listed at Rockingham in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory (Lyric and Wonderland) so the house was probably operated under one of those names then. A 1918 Sanborn map shows the building as “Electric Theatre”, but I don’t know if that was the operating name at that time or it was just being used by Sanborn as a generic term for a movie theater in that instance.
The Star opened in September 1913. The owner and operator was Henry C. Ranke. It was the first theatre in Rockingham and the second in Richmond County. Washington Street is on what was originally call Courthouse Square; laterly Harrington Square.
I don’t know if this link will work or not, due to the grotesque way Facebook is set up, but this Facebook post makes a pretty good argument that the Star Theatre was in a building at 104 W. Washington Street. There are some vintage photos. Real estate web sites say that the building there now was built in 1949. With this address Google street view defaults to the building around the corner on Lee Street, but that’s better than the default we’ve got now, which is Harrington Road out in the boondocks between Rockingham and Ellerbe.