Isis Theatre

The Isis Theatre was a long-running neighborhood movie house in Central City. Located right across the street from the happening, 1849-built Dryades Market, the address was home to the Monarch Theater, a short-lived nickelodeon from 1907 to 1911 operated by Charles Wagner. The 19th Century frame building was home to a long-running meat market and a saloon with residences above. It was the second busiest shopping district in the City of New Orleans and the primary one for African American and Jewish communities from just prior to the Civil War into the 20th Century.

The Monarch Theater was closed under new operator P.A. “Blank” Blankenship. Blankenship created a two-story brick building in 1911 that appears to be a new build-structure (although it’s possible that elements of the original building were incorporated). Reports suggest that the new Isis Theatre may have had a Coburn pipe organ at launch - swanky.

In 1921, the Isis Theatre closed temporarily as the venue was basically reimagined with seating capacity at 1,200 and replacing the pipe organ. United Theaters took on the Isis Theatre and it was a late sound conversion waiting until 1930. The venue lasted all the way under that nameplate until closing after the March 20, 1953 double feature of “Dakota” and “Little Tough Guys". The building with equipment was offered for sale. After finding few buyers, the venue became the Gloryland-Mt. Gillion Baptist Church on June 25, 1956 using the theater’s attractor.

As for the vibrancy of the commercial district, it had waned and then was obliterated just blocks away when NOLA’s urban renewal - sometimes called “The Monster” - project building the Claiborne Expressway / Interstate 10 severed the African American district beginning on Ash Wednesday in 1966 and the elevated superhighway opening in 1969. Despite that, the Gloryland Church has continued into the 2020’s almost unchanged from the exterior other than losing the Isis Theater signage and a change of street name. The 11-block stretch of Dryades Street that houses the former Isis Theatre turned Gloryland Church was officially renamed Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard by the New Orleans City Council in 1989.

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