Comments from samredman

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samredman
samredman commented about Temple Theatre on Jul 7, 2010 at 9:49 pm

By the way… those aren’t lions as you can see from the photo at the Masonic Lodge (on 11th Street), they are Sphinxes (just like the great Sphinx in Egypt). That’s also what the two were in front of the theatre (on B street). They do have bodies of lions, but the head of a person (as everyone knows). Since I hadn’t seen them for about 50 years, I forgot exactly what they were.

samredman
samredman commented about Temple Theatre on Jul 6, 2010 at 12:04 pm

The Temple theatre was actually the auditorium for the Masonic Temple. It was located at 1138 North B Street, Fort Smith, Arkansas. Two large lion sculptures graced the entrance. It was an amazing art deco building with an Egyptian theme. The building has not been demolished, at least not when the last google street view cameras passed by. You can view it on the Google maps

http://maps.google.com/

Search for the address shown and then do street view. You have do a complete 180 degree turn because the image first shown is across the street from the theatre building.

The current google view shows that the lions are gone, but you can see the way the lions looked because their duplicates are still intact at the main entrance to the Masonic lodge (the address is 254 N 11 street), which you can also see with the Google street view. An image from 2008 on cinematours.com shows the lodge main entrance as the theatre. I know where the theatre was because I worked one college summer in the building next door and went to the theatre often.

http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/9850.html

That cinematour.com page lists its status as demolished, but while the theatre is gone the building is still there (unless that happened after the most recent Google maps photo).

According to wikipedia the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places:

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