Pines Theatre

The Pines Theatre was a 350-seat neighborhood movie theatre located in the Maplewood Shopping Center in Maplewood, Louisiana. Maplewood was a visionary, planned 295-acre wartime community developed by Cities Service Oil Co. to house predominately female employees and young families lured to jobs at its Rose Bluff chemistry division - its high octane fuel refinery that also was important in creating synthetic rubber. The cinema was named for the densely populated pine trees that had to be removed to create Maplewood.

Constructed in 1943, Maplewood contained 789 rental homes and was promoted as a modern, self-contained community located only seven minutes from Lake Charles (good luck with that during WW2… unless you had the a Sikorsky R-4 helicopter). Bus transportation connected residents with the refinery, allowing workers to commute easily between the plant and the new town. And families got to know each other – especially those on the outer fringes – as they carpooled to the theatre and to store as there was a strict 4 gallon per family limit on fuel during the War.

The Pines Theatre opened on October 28, 1944 with Phil Baker in “Take It or Leave It”. Managed by John Hinson and programmed through Theater Services Co., the Pines Theatre brought first-run Hollywood entertainment to the community. Clearances were not an issue as there was no other theatre in the Maplewood’s zone.

The brightest and arguably best built venue was the Cities Service filling station which had the primary first spot in the - Maplewood Shopping Center. The movie theater was given its own space between the gas station and the two flanks of retail shops. This was likely to ensure it wouldn’t burn the entire complex down when it inevitably caught on fire for the first time. (Commercial cinemas faced an extraordinarily high incidence of highly combustible projection fires due to the volatile nature of cellulose nitrate film prints.) Then two symmetric commercial wings ached by the A&P and post office on one side and a Ben Franklin variety store and professional services (salons, barbers, doctors and dentists) on the other. Two winged parking areas provided free spaces within steps of where you needed to be.

The Pines Theatre occupied a central place in the commercial life of the town and gave the feeling of living in a “complete” town. The theatre was austere at best (see photographs). But give John W. Harris Associates of New York all the credit in the world. Working with a $7 million budget and just trying to get the project green light during an era when every commercial building had to go through the War Production Board was a major achievement. Harris successfully argued that unstable housing meant an unstable fuel supply and a potential dagger to the War effort.

Where Cities Service could have created a shanty town of hastily built barracks close to the fumes and hazard zones of the Rose Bluff refinery operation, they instilled a Corporate Suburban Utopianism. The goal was to lure young educated women to 90 cent an hour jobs at 48 hour work weeks. Consider without low rental cost housing, it might have been less than a draw in a muddy, mosquito filled sheltered area. So Harris & Associates did what they had at the 1939 World’s Fair on a more modest budget. The semi-circles in street design and shopping center construction was bold and contemporary. Having the Pines Theatre and the Maplewood Community Pool as recreational anchors screamed middle class suburbia and neutralized workforce anxieties regarding the temporary nature of wartime defense assignments.

Harris’ clear limitation was in concrete where he didn’t have enough to make the modern roads. He opted for its use in sidewalks as they used far less of the material than paved roads and big crews of low-paid employees could quickly get that task accomplished. The incidence of dirt roads elevated Louisiana clay and mud issues and confusion among cows, in particular, who felt safe blocking the muddy roads or commonly showing up in front of the movie theater or people’s houses to graze.

But like so many strip shopping centers and malls that followed around the country, the first 20-year leasing cycles were easy and predictable. The subsequent renewal period posed a fatal challenge at the Maplewood. Basically, nobody wanted to re-up as the shopping center was clearly built in an austere budgetary period with less desirable materials and accelerated construction schedules. So everyone basically bolted from the Maplewood Shopping Center for the newly-created and better built Central City Shopping Center.

The theatre didn’t re-up and sat vacant until it was destroyed by fire on July 9, 1967. The Pines Theatre blaze didn’t burn down any neighboring structures so the planning was successful! An aerial shot in 1967 shows the charred roofline of the theater and the 1968 shows it excised from the abandoned center. In 1969, the entire plaza is gone except for the community pool. That pool made it to 2022 – one year prior to its 60th Anniversary. The recreational anchors were gone and now the once-visionary concept of Maplewood is just considered now as a part of Sulphur, Louisiana.

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