Closed and torn down in 1990 I believe. It was operated by MALCO and had been twinned. There was nothing much to say about it. It was a plain, somewhat barn-like, suburban hall.
The Playhouse management can’t be complemented highly enough for the extraordinary adaptation of the old Memphian. The seating capacity was reduced by half or more. The original stage was big enough only to hold the speaker cabinet. The lobby barely held a popcorn popper. Both lobby and stage were enlarged, the seats re-aligned, offices and dressing rooms inserted. The result is a wonderfully intimate and charming live stage theatre with the street presence of a 1930’s neighborhood cinema. The interior looks better now than it ever did. Likewise the talent, on stage and behind the scenes, is as good as any New York theatre’s. I have seen many shows at Playhouse On The Square and NEVER been disappointed in a performance. This has been a total success story – both for saving the old Memphian and creating a space for the finest in live theatre.
The Terrace is – to Knoxville film buffs – the most regreted lost theatre. The building is nothing to look at: a low metal building with a drop-off canopy instead of a marquee on the front. Inside a tiny lobby with a spray of “mod” tear-drop lights and a cramped candy counter lead the audience into the featureless curtained auditoriums.
For many years though, under the name Terrace Tap-House, it served as Knoxville’s art theatre. The location, just off Kingston Pike, (our main east/west street) with plenty of free parking, only 3 miles from the University of Tennessee’s 30,000 students AND at the center of Knoxville’s fashionable west side neighborhoods should have proved gold-mine.
When I first began visiting the Terrace in 1993 the projection looked like the lenses had been cleaned with sand paper. The pop corn was burned, the co-cola flat. There was no calender to know what was coming, nor how long a feature would stay. The auditorium floors had been stepped into terraces with tables and uncomfortable metal chairs. The sight lines were deplorable.
In its last incarnation someone outfitted an adjacent storefront as a complete restaurant kitchen to convert the old Terrace into the “Cinema Grill.” It lasted less than 6 months. The building is currently used as a coffee house under the name Fairbanks Roasting Room. I don’t know if they ever use the projection equipment, or if the projectors are even still there.
Still, when you talk to Knoxvillians of a certain age about the Terrace they will smile and say, “oh yes, I saw ____________ there.”
The Terrace is about a block from the Capri Cinema, q.v.
Thanks for your posting. Again, let me reiterate that the Lensic is a great place and I’m VERY glad to have been able to visit (my home is East Tennessee). You mention that you’re on staff there. So please tell me why if there is a house main, if there is cove lighting why weren’t these they used for “Steamboat Bill”? Certainly that was one occassion when they would have been absolutely appropriate to be highlighted.
Above, you mention “The ceiling had already been painted flat black (it is now dark blue) and the cloud projector and tapestry long gone – same with tile vestiges or plants.” When you say tapestry what do you mean? Boller Brothers theatres were often semi-atmospheric – a tent over the auditorium with the sky visible only at the edges. Is that how the Lensic was built? Were there stars? Why weren’t they restored? Surely the flat, grided ceiling I saw wasn’t original – be it blue or black.
Please tell us more about the renovation, how decisions were made and when it all happened. This site is to disseminate oral history to a wider audience. Please, this is your chance to fill out the story.
Apologies for a typo above: it should say “…formed a very EARLY 2-screen complex.” We need tntim to tell us the whole story here. His father was the projectionist at the Capri (I think) for the theatre’s whole existence.
Jack, yes, that is the Pike – a.k.a. the Capri. Kingston Pike is the main street on the west side of Knoxville. That area has had the most growth since WWII and continues to expand at a phenominal rate.
The Cedar Bluff was converted to office space in the mid-1990’s. At this date, it is un-recognizable as a former theatre. It had been a twin in its last years. Don’t know if it was built that way or not.
The Park was torn down in the summer of 2002. It had been empty for several years with its roof structure exposed to the elements. The last tenant was a carpet warehouse operation which didn’t last too long. The Park occupied a corner zero-lot-line parcel with no parking: a death nell in a town in a marginal neighborhood.
The Capri was built adjacent to and as part of the post WWII Pike Theatre. The Pike and Capri formed a very 2-screen complex. The Pike was a very ahem innocent little hall whose main claim to fame was that it was the first in an experiment in prefabricated construction techniques.
The Capri was built to present single strip cinerama with a deeply curved ribbon screen.
Both halls were subsequently twined to form a 4-plex. Long closed as a theatre, in the mid-1990’s the buildings were converted into an art gallery: the larger hall had its main floor leveled and a 2nd floor inserted into the auditorium space. The front +/– 1/3 of the older, smaller hall was torn down and the rear portion made into office and storage space.
The only realy memorable exterior feature was/is the two story window-wall which formed the front of the Capri’s lobby.
Ziggy, On my visit the triple arches on the sides were back draped in black. I don’t think there was any cove lighting. That’s marginally better than the silly letters on each side, but still contributed to the overall un-inspired effect.
Best wishes,
Will
Following up on my previous comment. The link to the Lensic’s own site indicates that the interior decorator for the renovation was Conrad Schmit Studios. Is it just me, are do other’s find their work wanting? I’ve seen several of their halls and always come away thinking their favorite color is beige, their work concise but bland, their taste conservative to the point of banality. Or am I expecting too much?
I just spent a lovely vacation week in Santa Fe and was very fortunate to be able to see Buster Keaton’s silent comedy “Steamboat Bill” presented with a live 6-piece orchestra at the Lensic. I can’t agree with Ziggy enough. The Lensic is standing, it’s clean, it’s loved, but the magnificient plasterwork now looks like a temporary stage set inside a black box. It looks like the architect and client had no idea how to renovate a movie palace. Curtains are black, light fixtures are all modern and surface mounted, all the cove lighting is gone, the atmospheric sky is gone (black flat ceiling with stage lights hung on a grid), the interior painting looks amaturish (did they get a do-it-yourself kit from Home Depot), what curtains there are are all black, there is no house main, the screen was in full view the whole time. (They did have a go-bo on the screen to give it a little interest). The organ seems to be gone.
I had to laugh at the curtain speech inwhich the MC complimented the theatre’s magnificent acoustics. Then the orchestra came in and they all had microphones pointed into their instruments: even the TUBA and SAXOPHONE!
Lest we forget though, this is the only movie palace in Santa Fe and it is still a wonderful venue. The projection quality was spot-on, the seats comfortable, the entire theatre was clean and open. A side alley has been enclosed and serves as ancillary lobby space with new spacious restrooms.
One day, we can hope for a more sympathetic renovation. But in the mean time, it was a great show and Santa Fe still has a jewel of a theatre. It is very much worth a visit.
Saw “That Darn Cat” here as kid in our 1962 Chevy II station wagon sitting on the tailgate. Back then the address really was Lebanon Road rather than Lebanon Pike.
Norman, I have to agree with you about Memphis' which of the big 4 theatres in downtown Memphis was the finest. The Loew’s State with its half-block long lobby and its Thomas Lamb “Adam” auditorium was a masterpiece. The Orpheum is bigger and possibly richer, but the Loews State was a masterpiece. And to think, the lot sat there empty for 30 years. Tears over spilled milk, I know, but none-the-less, a sad loss.
The Memphis Public Library has a couple of vaudeville programs from this theatre and photos of it being torn down.
The plaza was a superior movie theatre built in what a friend called Mamie Eisenhower Modern. The exterior was clad in travertine marble (along with the rest of the Poplar Plaza shopping center) with an eccentric stainless steel finial atop the marble clad vertical sign. The long lobby lead patrons past the adjacent storefronts to a broad orchestra foyer. The restrooms feature curving walls, curving leather settees and tinted mirrors. The audiorium opened up in a broad single floor with a cinemascope screen braced by backlit stainless steel spirals. Behind the screen was a tiny stage, really only big enough to hold the big Altec Lansing speakers. Room was provided behind the stage for expansion should live theatre ever come to the Plaza, but a real stage house was never built.
This is the theatre where the catch phrase “Elvis has left the building” comes from. The plaza’s facilities included party rooms and private viewing rooms on an upper floor. Elvis could go see a movie here without anyone seeing him, at least that’s what he hoped. Seems one night word got out that he was in the theatre and it started a panic. He slipped out a side door and the manager wound up shouting that memorable phrase in an effort to calm the crowd.
The Plaza got twinned in the late 1970’s (?) to compete with the newer, and considerably plainer, Malco Quartet (an early 4-plex) directly across the street.
The Plaza finally closed in the late 1980’s. The whole shopping center changed hands soon thereafter. In an in-explicable renovation, the entire shopping center was stripped of its travertine marble cladding and painted beige. Bookstar took the Plaza and did an exemplary renovation on the interior. The only major change being that they leveled the floor to create a sales area. The auditorium, lobby, orchestra foyer, restrooms, even the box office were all lovingly repaired, renovated and restored. The only loss was the funky finial atop the vertical sign which – after much public outcry – went to the a local museum.
The Plaza was an easy walk from Memphis State Univeristy, but not enough students made the 10-minute trip to keep this lovely hall operating.
TC nice photos! These would have been taken in the early 1990’s I think. The stagehouse has since been extended, the vertical sign rebuilt and the marquee sign boards changed to electronic displays. The old milk glass letters in these photos were purchased from the Ohio and Palace theatres in Columbus Ohio with some letters also coming from a Memphis salvage yard which had torn down Memphis’s Loew’s Palace. The milk glass letters looked great, but were terribly fragile and after too many were broken the management rebuilt the signboards with electronics.
The Ruffin Theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It is listed as building #92000248.
The architectural firm was Speight & Hibbs. The theatre was named for William F. Ruffin.
The “New Daisy” actually has that name on its marquee. The Old Daisy just says “Daisy” on the front: don’t know if it’s had other names through the years, but it is always refered to as the “Old Daisy” now. I’ll get the New Daisy on the site soon, it was a “stage show and feature” theatre for many years. (So many theatres, so little time.)
When Paramount Publix opened the magnificent Tennessee Theatre (q.v.) two blocks from the Bijou in 1928, they required that the Bijou close as a theatrical venue for “X” period of time. During those years, the Bijou stage saw many odd uses, the oddest possibly was a new car display about 1930. Movies returned to the Bijou about 1935.
The other story is about the convoluted ownership the theatre went through during the 1960’s and 70’s. The theatre building and the land was owned by a businessman and the theatre was operated by a succession of movie presentation companies. As downtown declined, so did the quality of the operation at the Bijou. From 1st run to 2nd run until finally the Bijou went porno. The old front-end building – an 1840 hotel – became a notorius brothel. In this sorry state the Bijou operated for years.
The businessman who actually owned the facility, along with large tracts of downtown realestate finally died and of course left everything to his wife. When SHE died, she left much of the realestate holdings to the giant, ultra-respectable, downtown Methodist church.
The church found itself owning a notorius brothel and porno theatre with a couple of years to go on the iron-clad leases!
It is a minor miracle that they didn’t tear the place down then and there, but the Bijou survived and after a THOROUGH cleaning returned to respectability in the early 1980’s.
If not an EXACT replica, it’s a FINE sign which made me tear-up with joy when I saw it. Exact replica? Well… It is a joy to see it daytime or nighttime. I suspect the purists on this web-site would wonder where they got the LED’s in 1928 though. The street looks better today than it has in decades, largely due to the grand vertical sign towering over the marquee.
Rosa Rio also played at the Brooklyn Paramount, (mentioned farther down in the story) and she is still alive and still playing and still a delightful, gracious lady. Her published works for jazz and theatre organ can be found on eBay from time to time.
Funny how the story about the ghost keeps changing. The only thing that seems to stay the same is the little girl’s name. Her death date, what theatre she haunts, and where she is seen seems to be a moving target. In the 3 years that I worked at the theatre, the only para-normal phenominon I ever saw was the former house manager who haunted some pretty unsavory corners of downtown.
Closed and torn down in 1990 I believe. It was operated by MALCO and had been twinned. There was nothing much to say about it. It was a plain, somewhat barn-like, suburban hall.
The Playhouse management can’t be complemented highly enough for the extraordinary adaptation of the old Memphian. The seating capacity was reduced by half or more. The original stage was big enough only to hold the speaker cabinet. The lobby barely held a popcorn popper. Both lobby and stage were enlarged, the seats re-aligned, offices and dressing rooms inserted. The result is a wonderfully intimate and charming live stage theatre with the street presence of a 1930’s neighborhood cinema. The interior looks better now than it ever did. Likewise the talent, on stage and behind the scenes, is as good as any New York theatre’s. I have seen many shows at Playhouse On The Square and NEVER been disappointed in a performance. This has been a total success story – both for saving the old Memphian and creating a space for the finest in live theatre.
Dear Theaterat: I do hope for the best and hope you will talk to your doctor about Prozac.
Mellowly yours and posting my full name
Will Dunklin
Knoxville Tennessee
The Terrace is – to Knoxville film buffs – the most regreted lost theatre. The building is nothing to look at: a low metal building with a drop-off canopy instead of a marquee on the front. Inside a tiny lobby with a spray of “mod” tear-drop lights and a cramped candy counter lead the audience into the featureless curtained auditoriums.
For many years though, under the name Terrace Tap-House, it served as Knoxville’s art theatre. The location, just off Kingston Pike, (our main east/west street) with plenty of free parking, only 3 miles from the University of Tennessee’s 30,000 students AND at the center of Knoxville’s fashionable west side neighborhoods should have proved gold-mine.
When I first began visiting the Terrace in 1993 the projection looked like the lenses had been cleaned with sand paper. The pop corn was burned, the co-cola flat. There was no calender to know what was coming, nor how long a feature would stay. The auditorium floors had been stepped into terraces with tables and uncomfortable metal chairs. The sight lines were deplorable.
In its last incarnation someone outfitted an adjacent storefront as a complete restaurant kitchen to convert the old Terrace into the “Cinema Grill.” It lasted less than 6 months. The building is currently used as a coffee house under the name Fairbanks Roasting Room. I don’t know if they ever use the projection equipment, or if the projectors are even still there.
Still, when you talk to Knoxvillians of a certain age about the Terrace they will smile and say, “oh yes, I saw ____________ there.”
The Terrace is about a block from the Capri Cinema, q.v.
pac:
Thanks for your posting. Again, let me reiterate that the Lensic is a great place and I’m VERY glad to have been able to visit (my home is East Tennessee). You mention that you’re on staff there. So please tell me why if there is a house main, if there is cove lighting why weren’t these they used for “Steamboat Bill”? Certainly that was one occassion when they would have been absolutely appropriate to be highlighted.
Above, you mention “The ceiling had already been painted flat black (it is now dark blue) and the cloud projector and tapestry long gone – same with tile vestiges or plants.” When you say tapestry what do you mean? Boller Brothers theatres were often semi-atmospheric – a tent over the auditorium with the sky visible only at the edges. Is that how the Lensic was built? Were there stars? Why weren’t they restored? Surely the flat, grided ceiling I saw wasn’t original – be it blue or black.
Please tell us more about the renovation, how decisions were made and when it all happened. This site is to disseminate oral history to a wider audience. Please, this is your chance to fill out the story.
Will
Apologies for a typo above: it should say “…formed a very EARLY 2-screen complex.” We need tntim to tell us the whole story here. His father was the projectionist at the Capri (I think) for the theatre’s whole existence.
Jack, yes, that is the Pike – a.k.a. the Capri. Kingston Pike is the main street on the west side of Knoxville. That area has had the most growth since WWII and continues to expand at a phenominal rate.
The Cedar Bluff was converted to office space in the mid-1990’s. At this date, it is un-recognizable as a former theatre. It had been a twin in its last years. Don’t know if it was built that way or not.
The Park was torn down in the summer of 2002. It had been empty for several years with its roof structure exposed to the elements. The last tenant was a carpet warehouse operation which didn’t last too long. The Park occupied a corner zero-lot-line parcel with no parking: a death nell in a town in a marginal neighborhood.
The Capri was built adjacent to and as part of the post WWII Pike Theatre. The Pike and Capri formed a very 2-screen complex. The Pike was a very ahem innocent little hall whose main claim to fame was that it was the first in an experiment in prefabricated construction techniques.
The Capri was built to present single strip cinerama with a deeply curved ribbon screen.
Both halls were subsequently twined to form a 4-plex. Long closed as a theatre, in the mid-1990’s the buildings were converted into an art gallery: the larger hall had its main floor leveled and a 2nd floor inserted into the auditorium space. The front +/– 1/3 of the older, smaller hall was torn down and the rear portion made into office and storage space.
The only realy memorable exterior feature was/is the two story window-wall which formed the front of the Capri’s lobby.
Ziggy, On my visit the triple arches on the sides were back draped in black. I don’t think there was any cove lighting. That’s marginally better than the silly letters on each side, but still contributed to the overall un-inspired effect.
Best wishes,
Will
Following up on my previous comment. The link to the Lensic’s own site indicates that the interior decorator for the renovation was Conrad Schmit Studios. Is it just me, are do other’s find their work wanting? I’ve seen several of their halls and always come away thinking their favorite color is beige, their work concise but bland, their taste conservative to the point of banality. Or am I expecting too much?
I just spent a lovely vacation week in Santa Fe and was very fortunate to be able to see Buster Keaton’s silent comedy “Steamboat Bill” presented with a live 6-piece orchestra at the Lensic. I can’t agree with Ziggy enough. The Lensic is standing, it’s clean, it’s loved, but the magnificient plasterwork now looks like a temporary stage set inside a black box. It looks like the architect and client had no idea how to renovate a movie palace. Curtains are black, light fixtures are all modern and surface mounted, all the cove lighting is gone, the atmospheric sky is gone (black flat ceiling with stage lights hung on a grid), the interior painting looks amaturish (did they get a do-it-yourself kit from Home Depot), what curtains there are are all black, there is no house main, the screen was in full view the whole time. (They did have a go-bo on the screen to give it a little interest). The organ seems to be gone.
I had to laugh at the curtain speech inwhich the MC complimented the theatre’s magnificent acoustics. Then the orchestra came in and they all had microphones pointed into their instruments: even the TUBA and SAXOPHONE!
Lest we forget though, this is the only movie palace in Santa Fe and it is still a wonderful venue. The projection quality was spot-on, the seats comfortable, the entire theatre was clean and open. A side alley has been enclosed and serves as ancillary lobby space with new spacious restrooms.
One day, we can hope for a more sympathetic renovation. But in the mean time, it was a great show and Santa Fe still has a jewel of a theatre. It is very much worth a visit.
Saw “That Darn Cat” here as kid in our 1962 Chevy II station wagon sitting on the tailgate. Back then the address really was Lebanon Road rather than Lebanon Pike.
Norman, I have to agree with you about Memphis' which of the big 4 theatres in downtown Memphis was the finest. The Loew’s State with its half-block long lobby and its Thomas Lamb “Adam” auditorium was a masterpiece. The Orpheum is bigger and possibly richer, but the Loews State was a masterpiece. And to think, the lot sat there empty for 30 years. Tears over spilled milk, I know, but none-the-less, a sad loss.
The Memphis Public Library has a couple of vaudeville programs from this theatre and photos of it being torn down.
The plaza was a superior movie theatre built in what a friend called Mamie Eisenhower Modern. The exterior was clad in travertine marble (along with the rest of the Poplar Plaza shopping center) with an eccentric stainless steel finial atop the marble clad vertical sign. The long lobby lead patrons past the adjacent storefronts to a broad orchestra foyer. The restrooms feature curving walls, curving leather settees and tinted mirrors. The audiorium opened up in a broad single floor with a cinemascope screen braced by backlit stainless steel spirals. Behind the screen was a tiny stage, really only big enough to hold the big Altec Lansing speakers. Room was provided behind the stage for expansion should live theatre ever come to the Plaza, but a real stage house was never built.
This is the theatre where the catch phrase “Elvis has left the building” comes from. The plaza’s facilities included party rooms and private viewing rooms on an upper floor. Elvis could go see a movie here without anyone seeing him, at least that’s what he hoped. Seems one night word got out that he was in the theatre and it started a panic. He slipped out a side door and the manager wound up shouting that memorable phrase in an effort to calm the crowd.
The Plaza got twinned in the late 1970’s (?) to compete with the newer, and considerably plainer, Malco Quartet (an early 4-plex) directly across the street.
The Plaza finally closed in the late 1980’s. The whole shopping center changed hands soon thereafter. In an in-explicable renovation, the entire shopping center was stripped of its travertine marble cladding and painted beige. Bookstar took the Plaza and did an exemplary renovation on the interior. The only major change being that they leveled the floor to create a sales area. The auditorium, lobby, orchestra foyer, restrooms, even the box office were all lovingly repaired, renovated and restored. The only loss was the funky finial atop the vertical sign which – after much public outcry – went to the a local museum.
The Plaza was an easy walk from Memphis State Univeristy, but not enough students made the 10-minute trip to keep this lovely hall operating.
TC nice photos! These would have been taken in the early 1990’s I think. The stagehouse has since been extended, the vertical sign rebuilt and the marquee sign boards changed to electronic displays. The old milk glass letters in these photos were purchased from the Ohio and Palace theatres in Columbus Ohio with some letters also coming from a Memphis salvage yard which had torn down Memphis’s Loew’s Palace. The milk glass letters looked great, but were terribly fragile and after too many were broken the management rebuilt the signboards with electronics.
Found this collage photo of the block which includes the Princess, now sans any architectural features. Seems it is now used as a church.
View link
The Ruffin Theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It is listed as building #92000248.
The architectural firm was Speight & Hibbs. The theatre was named for William F. Ruffin.
The “New Daisy” actually has that name on its marquee. The Old Daisy just says “Daisy” on the front: don’t know if it’s had other names through the years, but it is always refered to as the “Old Daisy” now. I’ll get the New Daisy on the site soon, it was a “stage show and feature” theatre for many years. (So many theatres, so little time.)
Not only did the Lamar House host 5 presidents, but rumor has it a number of queens lodged there too!
A couple of endearing stories about the Bijou.
When Paramount Publix opened the magnificent Tennessee Theatre (q.v.) two blocks from the Bijou in 1928, they required that the Bijou close as a theatrical venue for “X” period of time. During those years, the Bijou stage saw many odd uses, the oddest possibly was a new car display about 1930. Movies returned to the Bijou about 1935.
The other story is about the convoluted ownership the theatre went through during the 1960’s and 70’s. The theatre building and the land was owned by a businessman and the theatre was operated by a succession of movie presentation companies. As downtown declined, so did the quality of the operation at the Bijou. From 1st run to 2nd run until finally the Bijou went porno. The old front-end building – an 1840 hotel – became a notorius brothel. In this sorry state the Bijou operated for years.
The businessman who actually owned the facility, along with large tracts of downtown realestate finally died and of course left everything to his wife. When SHE died, she left much of the realestate holdings to the giant, ultra-respectable, downtown Methodist church.
The church found itself owning a notorius brothel and porno theatre with a couple of years to go on the iron-clad leases!
It is a minor miracle that they didn’t tear the place down then and there, but the Bijou survived and after a THOROUGH cleaning returned to respectability in the early 1980’s.
If not an EXACT replica, it’s a FINE sign which made me tear-up with joy when I saw it. Exact replica? Well… It is a joy to see it daytime or nighttime. I suspect the purists on this web-site would wonder where they got the LED’s in 1928 though. The street looks better today than it has in decades, largely due to the grand vertical sign towering over the marquee.
Rosa Rio also played at the Brooklyn Paramount, (mentioned farther down in the story) and she is still alive and still playing and still a delightful, gracious lady. Her published works for jazz and theatre organ can be found on eBay from time to time.
Funny how the story about the ghost keeps changing. The only thing that seems to stay the same is the little girl’s name. Her death date, what theatre she haunts, and where she is seen seems to be a moving target. In the 3 years that I worked at the theatre, the only para-normal phenominon I ever saw was the former house manager who haunted some pretty unsavory corners of downtown.