Victor Theatre

The Luna Theatre at 84 S. Howard Street (now renamed Dart Avenue) was the second full-time movie theatre in Akron launching in 1906, a year after the Unique Theatre. It appears to have moved into an existing retail building that dated back just five years to 1901.The Luna Theatre was a successful nickelodeon-era venue, operated by Charles Decker, with 173-seats and 6-shows a day, likely opening on a 10-year leasing agreement that ended in August of 1916. The undersized theatre, just 200 seats, managed to find new operators who took on the venue beginning on October 3, 1916 as the Victor Theatre. It launched with Virginia Pearson in “Blazing Love".

Richard A. White served as the projectionist there and continued to the Palace Theatre as that venue’s main projectionist from opening on April 26, 1926 to 1955. White also was the cinematographer of fight films in Ohio that played at the Luna Theatre and later at the Victor Theatre when the theatre changed names. He also is credited with the first films ever taken in Akron that he sometimes shared in the movie theatre.

The Victor Theatre ran as a silent movie theatre from 1916 all the way to February of 1929 when it went into receivership and was auctioned off on March 16, 1929. It became the short-lived home of the Union Men’s Club which ran into Prohibition-era problems that included a raid that seems to have ended its run in 1929. The building was then repurposed for retail use and lasted into the 1960’s. But in 1960, the Cascade Urban Renewal project identified the block at S. Howard Street and Mill Street for “rehabilitation.” In 1967, the building that once housed the Luna Theatre / Victor Theatre was razed. It was a parking lot for a period of time before S. Howard Street was upended becoming Dart Avenue. The Akron Centre Plaza occupies the space that would have been within steps of the former Luna Theatre / Victor Theatre.

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