MOVIE THEATERS

Circa 1912, the Pickwick Theatre moved next door (to the west, now 103 Franklin Street) into the Brockwell Building, as Brockwell owned both these properties at the time.

The Standard Theater opened July 4, 1924, and was originally owned by local African American enterpreneur Durwood O'Kelly; other business partners were Charles Brooks (the builder/contractor of the building), and Jesse Kirkland (the brick mason for the project). It had seating for 300. The theater also hosted social events and monthly dances, and the space was occasionally used for Sunday church services by various church congregations that did not have a building of their own. 

The Hollywood Theater was located in Carrboro on East Main Street (also known as West Franklin Street at the time), near the merge with Rosemary Street. It began operation in 1939, and was opened to cater to Black patrons at the same time the Standard Theater closed down (actually, the Standard apparently closed due to the loss of patrons to the Hollywood). E. Carrington Smith, manager of the segregated Carolina Theater in downtown Chapel Hill, was the proprietor of the theater, and its manager was Kenneth Jones. In the early 1940s, weekly attendance was about 1,300 to 1,500 people, and the theater was open every day except Sundays. 

The Hollywood Theatre, May 1940 (photo by Jack Delano, courtesy of the Library of Congress)

The Hollywood Theatre, October 1939 or April 1941 (screen shot from H. Lee Waters movie)

"Movies of Local People" shown at the Hollywood Theatre, April 1941 (screen shot from H. Lee Waters movie)

The North Carolina photographer and movie maker, H. Lee Waters, filmed a quantity of footage on the border of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and his movies were shown at the Hollywood Theater on October 6th and 7th, 1939 and in April 1941. 

Sanborn map excerpt, December 1945

By 1961 the theater was no longer in business. The building is currently utilized as office space and an artists' studio.

Former Hollywood Theater, August 2011 (S. Rankin)

122 W. King, early 20th century postcard (UNC Postcard Collection)

As Steve Rankin wryly pointed out, the predecessor (J. C. Scott) to this building housed a truly unfortunate concomitant combination of businesses.

Yes folks, that's undertaker and meat market - with an interior communcation (the gap in the common wall)

Hopefully the synergies were not what they hoped; by 1924 the brick building pictured above had been constructed, and it was a movie theater. In the postcard above, you can see the sandwich board in the front entrance, and someone wrote on the card "Theater" with a line pointing to the building. At some point, it became the Osbunn theater.

Gee Coleman, writing in the News of Orange in 2011 wrote that the theater was named for Oswin and Bunn Forrest - two brothers who were business partners in the early operation. He goes on:

During the Great Depression when so many mills shut down and his roller business was way down, [W.M. Chance] leased the closed theater in west Hillsboro from the owner, Scott Cates. It was the Hollywood Theater, and he began operations there about 1936.

Later, Mr. Chance bought the Osbunn Theatre on King Street in downtown Hillsboro from Ormond Crabtree, who was moving his family to Florida to go into the citrus grove business. Mr. Chance then closed the Roller Shop and concentrated on the movie business.

As was the case most of the time in those days when a man operated a small business, his family joined in and helped out in any way they could. I remember Mrs. Chance worked in the ticket booth of the Osbunn for many years, and I am sure that the rest of his large family worked there or at the Hollywood Theater at some time.

They included: Bill, who married Wynne Cole; Christine, who married H.S. (Shine) Baucom; Marie, who married William Cates; Fred, who married Ora Mincey; Grace, who married Jack Liedl and moved to Fairfax, Va.; Violet, who married Earl Bason; and Donald (Pee-Wee), who was the mascot of the Hillsboro High School Class of 1936 and now lives in western Colorado.

1966 (Hillsborough General Development Plan)

As of 2016 it houses Carolina Game and Fish.

National Register nomination:

This two-story, brick commercial building has been altered with the installation of replacement storefronts and stucco covering the second-floor level. The building has a flat roof behind a parapet roof with terra cotta coping. There is a one-light-over-three-panel door flanked by one-light display windows on the right (east) end of the façade with a stone stoop and a full-width boarded-up transom. On the left (west) end of the façade, paired one-light doors and two twelve-light windows are located in a wood surround covered with asbestos shingles. The former marquee is supported by cables and extends the full width of the façade, though has been covered with vertical plywood sheathing. The second-floor level has been covered with stucco, though a single two-over-two wood-sash window remains on the right end, lighting the former projection booth. A shed-roofed addition at the second-floor level of the right elevation sits atop the building at 120 West King Street. The building appears on the 1924 Sanborn map.

Photo by G. Kueber, 7.31.2016

Carolina Game and Fish closed in 2018. As of July 2019, the new owner is proposing to "restore the original brick veneer, original arched window openings and the 1960s marquee" as a part of a renovation to use the the building as a restaurant.

10.04.2019 (G. Kueber)

1939, H. Lee Waters (State Archives of NC)

The Hollywood Theater closed in 19XX?

In 2011, Hillsborough BBQ Co. opened in this building.

07.31.2016 (G. Kueber)

1950s (Richard Ellington via http://carrborocommons.mj.unc.edu/?p=8967)

(Below from the Carrboro Commercial National Register Nomination)

Constructed in the early 1920s, this trio of two-story adjoining buildings comprised Carrboro's first true commercial block. Except for minor variations all of the units are identical. The easternmost building was constructed first, c. 1917. The identical building next door (to the west) was constructed next. Finally, the third building featuring a double storefront, was constructed last. The exact date of construction of the later two buildings is not known, however all three buildings appear on the 1921 Sanborn Map. Below slightly recessed window walls at the second story, the storefronts consist of large plate glass windows in wooden frames with recessed panelled aprons below, double doors, and multi-paned transoms and molded cornices extending the full width of the display windows. The easternmost unit, at the corner of Roberson and East Main streets, has undergone the greatest alteration with the renovation of its entrance facade and the addition of a shedroofed shake canopy. Today occupied by a bar, this unit originally was E. Samply Merritt's Drug Store. (As early as c. 1900, this corner lot had been occupied by a one-story frame building housing a hardware and building materials store; the fate of this earlier building is unknown.) For many years the unit next door (to the west) of Merritt's Drug Store was the site of the Melba Movie Theatre, named for the daughter of proprietor, Gurnie H. Ray. Some of the piano players in this silent movie theater with cane bottom kitchen chairs for seats were Brack Riggsbee, Mrs. Flossie Campbell and Mrs. Mack White. Tenants of the other buidling to the west of the movie theatre have included the Ward & Squires Furniture Store and Frank Durham's dry good store.

09.11.2019 (G. Kueber)

The Colonial Movie Theatre was located on New Greensboro Road (present-day Weaver Street), across from Durham Hosiery Mill Number 4. It operated from circa 1914 to 1917, and was mainly patronized by the local white mill workers and their families. The former theater's structure was likely destroyed in the 1924 fire that for the most part destroyed Carrboro's commercial district.

1915 Sanborn map excerpt, showing "Picture Show" structure

Henry "Buddy" Guthrie operated this movie theater. It was built circa 1916 and operated until early 1924; its demise may have been due to that it was "under suspicion of being conducted improperly and a menace to public morals" by the town (Willie Williams was likely hanging out in front of this theater location on November 15, 1924, when he was stabbed in the neck and killed by Fred Johnson), and also may have lost customers to newer theaters.

Excerpt of 1925 Sanborn map (Guthrie's is outlined in yellow)

The building was demolished by the early 1930s. The building was located approximately where Chapel Hill Cleaners is currently located.