Motor City Theater

8120 E. Nine Mile Road,
Warren, MI 48089

Unfavorite No one has favorited this theater yet

Showing 2 comments

graymatters
graymatters on April 18, 2021 at 10:48 am

The Motor City Theatre stood at 8120 E. Nine Mile Road in Warren, Michigan. My uncle’s list shows the Motor City as a 1939 Johnson Construction Company project.

One of my grandfather Albert S. “Al” Johnson’s slides, taken in August 1948, shows a relatively large entrance with four sets of double doors and an immense vertical Motor City neon sign above the marquee. The 1948 film “Alias a Gentleman” with Wallace Beery, and the 1937 Western “Rustler’s Valley” were showing at the time. A second slide shows the another side of the building (both images uploaded to this website).

In the same building, a drugstore can be seen to the left of the theatre. The visible sides of the building facing the two streets are done up in a nice art moderne or art deco style, and feature the porcelain enamel tiled finish which characterized several of the theaters that Johnson built and remodeled between the 1930s and 1950s.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on May 22, 2008 at 6:19 pm

There are some additional photos on this page:
http://tinyurl.com/64nvtr