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.
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
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.
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.
Yes Don, I’m a native Atlantan. I’m glad that I could clarify the confusion about the Bankhead but I don’t know the years it was in operation. I do not recall it being an active movie house in my life time. Therefore, it had to have ceased being a movie house at least before the early 50s.
Bellwod was a tough neighborhood that we passed through on our way to downtown from Grove Park. I remember the building and the old theatre marquee. In the 50s and 60s it was a general merchandise store. In the late 70s and early 80s the area was abandonded and eventually acquired by Ga. Tech.
The Bankhead Theatre was not actually on Bankhead Highway but on Marietta Street at the intersection of Bankhead and Marietta. This is now the site of Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen Schoold of Business. Across the street is the renovated Roxy Hotel with it’s WSB -Welcome South Brother – sign still visible on the south side of the building.
This is the old Bellwood community a tough working class neighborhood bordered by the Exposition Cotton Mill community to the west and the public Techwood Homes project to the east. Just north of the Bankhead were the stockyards where farmers brought in their livestock. Next to the Bankhead was Sunshines Department store and one of the first Big Apple grocery stores.
Don K. My best recollection of when the 70mm projectors were installed was when the Roxy ran a film titled either “Cinerama” or “The Best of Cinerama”. These were some of the first films that gave you the feeling that your are part of the action. I saw this film at the Roxy around 1960 plus or minus a couple of years. The most memorable part was the roller coaster sequence.
Not too long after this the Martin Theatre company opened Martin’s Cinerama just down Peachtree close to the corner of Peachtree and North Ave. Here I saw many cinerama epics of the day: “How The West Was Won”, “The Sound of Music”.
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.
Jack, I don’t see these pic on Flickr. Do you have an exact link?
RCW
I would very much like to see your pictures of the Grove. Did you live GP?
RCW
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
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
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.
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.
Yes Don, I’m a native Atlantan. I’m glad that I could clarify the confusion about the Bankhead but I don’t know the years it was in operation. I do not recall it being an active movie house in my life time. Therefore, it had to have ceased being a movie house at least before the early 50s.
Bellwod was a tough neighborhood that we passed through on our way to downtown from Grove Park. I remember the building and the old theatre marquee. In the 50s and 60s it was a general merchandise store. In the late 70s and early 80s the area was abandonded and eventually acquired by Ga. Tech.
The Bankhead Theatre was not actually on Bankhead Highway but on Marietta Street at the intersection of Bankhead and Marietta. This is now the site of Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen Schoold of Business. Across the street is the renovated Roxy Hotel with it’s WSB -Welcome South Brother – sign still visible on the south side of the building.
This is the old Bellwood community a tough working class neighborhood bordered by the Exposition Cotton Mill community to the west and the public Techwood Homes project to the east. Just north of the Bankhead were the stockyards where farmers brought in their livestock. Next to the Bankhead was Sunshines Department store and one of the first Big Apple grocery stores.
Don K. My best recollection of when the 70mm projectors were installed was when the Roxy ran a film titled either “Cinerama” or “The Best of Cinerama”. These were some of the first films that gave you the feeling that your are part of the action. I saw this film at the Roxy around 1960 plus or minus a couple of years. The most memorable part was the roller coaster sequence.
Not too long after this the Martin Theatre company opened Martin’s Cinerama just down Peachtree close to the corner of Peachtree and North Ave. Here I saw many cinerama epics of the day: “How The West Was Won”, “The Sound of Music”.
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.