Grove Theatre
1576 Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway NW,
Atlanta,
GA
30318
1576 Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway NW,
Atlanta,
GA
30318
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Showing 26 - 45 of 45 comments
Don K., I agree with you that the communities and the theaters (particularly these old neighborhood theaters) are worth discussing together. They go together hand-in-hand. As you and I have discussed in this thread “going to the show” was just a piece of a lifestyle that’s really come and gone. I would certainly like to discuss community background and life here as long as Cinema Treasures are OK.
RCW
For what it’s worth, I’m not so sure that discussions of the communities that these theaters were located in is necessarily off topic. Since I grew up on the opposite side of town and never knew Grove Park, I find this thread interesting.
To a large extent the movie theaters in America in the 20th century reflected the lifestyle and values of their communities. Atlanta has changed so drastically in recent years that its fascinating to trace its development. One way to do that is to examine its public places, like its movie theaters, and their respective communities over the years.
RCW, I think you are correct. You posted while I was composing the above response. The contact is this handle @ AOL . COM.
Thanks to everyone else for bearing with me, and for a great lesson in this area and Atlanta cinema in general.
Hi Tom T,
Thanks for the quick reply. I’m interested in anything you care to share about the area, especialy if it adds to this thread. If it is too far off-topic, feel free to email me at this handle @AOL . Com.
In particular, I’d love to know the age and history of the area. The little I know is that it was supposed developed by the same Mr. Johnson who developed Johnson Estates in Morningside. The streets are supposedly named for his daughters, and Edwin was his son.
Gertrude is a great street, by the way. I love the houses on it and North / South Evelyn. They have always reminded me of Virginia Highlands and Morningside, even before I knew the history.
“My” house is one of two brick bungalows facing Grove Park, almost at the intersection of Hortense Pl and Bankhead/DLH. Woodson Elementary is directly in front of us, across the (now covered) tributary to Proctor Creek. I can see part of the Grove Theater from my front porch. I have a full and glorious view of the AutoZone to it’s immediate right, which I suspect was the A&P you mentioned above.
Hello Seyfun,
I would love to share my memories and the history of Grove Park with you. Not sure this is the place to run a thread about the community. Send me an e-mail link and I’ll respond.
RCW
Hi Seyfun. I lived on the lower (new) section of Gertude place around the corner from Hortense. There were 19 kids on our section of the street and we roamed pretty much all over the Hortense, Matilda, Florence, Gertrude area. We spent a lot of time down on Procter Creek as kid are prone to do. There, we could collect soda bottles for a few pennies at the A&P store up on Bankhead Highway. Occasionally, we would find an old bowling pin that had been discarded from the bowling alley that used to stand a few hundred yards from the Grove Theater.
I lived in Grove Park from around 1953 until around 1964 so I got to know the neighborhood pretty well. Is there anything in particular you are interested in?
Tom T
Wow, what a great thread. I am about to buy a place in Grove park and I love this little history lesson.
RCW and Tom T, my house on Hortense Place faces Grove Park. I’d love to know anything more you remember about the neighborhood, the homes, etc.
The scariest movie was war of the worlds Gene Barry.I was at the grove every sat.nite stayed for the late show remember that?My uncle was the policeman on duty for the late show just in case Ralph Kerr. He made sure i got home safe although i never remember any trouble. Great TIMES Great Neighborhood, skerr
I remember the Grove from my youth in the 50’s. What stands out most is the Yoyo contests from time to time and the one-night showing of the Harlum globetrotters movie………
The theater owners, the Welches lived up the street from us and went to the same church. I remember when they, and our librarian at Lena H Cox elementary school were killed during a sunday drive. The Welches had one son I remember, Richie.
I haven’t been in Grove Park for around 40 years….I’m amazed the old theater is still standing. Wish I had some photos.
Tom T
Jack what is in the old theater building?
Jack – Really nice photos! Thanks! I’ll have to take a look at this location the next time I’m in Atlanta.
RCW – Sure – The Madison – that figures! Good movie house! My dad used to take me there beginning when I was around age five or six!
Don K., I finally met up with my cousin and she confirmed that it was the Madison that we went to in her old neighborhood of East Atlanta
Jack, thanks for the pictures. I haven’t been to Grove Park for some time. Remarkably, the building looks much the way I remember it from the early 60s. Even that small wall and the grassy area was there. In fact, that’s about where the bicyle rack was located.
Here and here are photos of what remains of the Grove Theatre as of April 2007.
YES, it was a great time to be a kid! We baby boomers were lucky to grow up in the ‘50’s and early '60’s. In spite of issues like the cold war, racial relations, and some of the repression of that time, it was a relatively innocent era. While I won’t pretend that it was a better time than the present, I certainly believe that it was a simpler time.
Each time I visit Atlanta I am struck by how many of the places that I remember from that era seem to be disappearing. Atlanta has little regard for the past and not much sense of history. It seems like a very temporary place.
Moreland Avenue? Would that have been the Madison Theatre on Flat
Shoals Road near the junction of Moreland Avenue in East Atlanta? Or, could it have been the Euclid Theatre in Little Five Points? I attended both of those theaters in those years. They were good movie houses!
Yes Don, going to the Grove, Decatur, Glenn and all the other neighborhood theatres and watching horror and sci-fi movies was enormous fun.
My closest cousin lived on Moreland Ave. and when I visited with her we would go to a theatre in her neighborhood. We had the same fun there as we did at the Grove and that you had at the Decatur and the Glenn. It was a great time to be a kid.
Great post, rcw! Love personal recollections of attending these movie houses way back when! We seem to be roughly contemporaries and I can identify with all the titles you refer to in your post. I had similar experiences growing up on the east side where I frequently attended the Decatur and the Glen on Saturdays. My personal favorites were the Hammer horror movies from that era! Saw a number of them at the Paramount first run and then in the neighborhood theaters. Scary movies were enormous fun in those days, weren’t they?
Thanks for sharing your memories with us!
I grew up in Grove Park. Attended Lena H. Cox Elementary School. The Grove was a community theatre. In the fifties and until sometime in the mid-sixties the Grove showed most of the popular movies of the day. I clearly remember “The Ten Commandments” and other big titles showing at the Grove.
But my fondest memories of the Grove are Saturdays. Every Saturday the Grove ran cartoons, previews of up-coming attractions and a double feature. Me and my buddies (and our little brothers) would go to the Grove (we rode our bicycles and parked them in the Grove bicycle rack). Admission was 25 cents. A Coca-Cola was a dime and candy and pop-corn was five or ten cents.
The younger kids sat down stairs and the high schoolers sat in the balcony. This is where we spent the next four hours.
This was the hey day of William Castle movies: House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, The Tingler, Macabre, Mr. Sardonicus. And it was the height of sci-fi movies: Them, The Blob, The Amazing Colossal Man, Attack of the Forty Foot Woman, They Came from Outer Space and others. We saw them all.
The Grove always showed the previews and the front of the theatre was decorated with the movie posters of the coming attractions. We planned, we talked for weeks about the next scary movie. And who would be brave enough to go or who would chicken out.
The Grove is where I first saw the Birds and Psycho.
Finally, the Grove was owned and operated by the Welch family. They lived on Hortense Place across from Grove Park. They died in an auto accident (hit by a train) in the early sixties.
The building that housed the Grove Theater is still standing. You can still tell that it was a theater. The marquee still sticks out although it has been covered. While going to Woodson Elementary School I saw the building across the street from the school.
According to the Atlanta Time Machine website at:
View link
the Bankhead Highway is now known as the Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. While I never actually knew the Grove Theatre when I was growing up, I do remember the ads in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for the theatre. As a matter of curiosity, I’d like to know if the building that originally housed the Grove Theatre is still standing.
My best guess is that the theatre probably closed sometime in the 1960’s. Hopefully, someone who reads this post will have some more specific memories.