Trace Theater
725 Market Street,
Port Gibson,
MS
39150
725 Market Street,
Port Gibson,
MS
39150
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The Trace Theater was constructed in 1946, replacing an earlier theater of the same name which burned in 1944. The Trace Theatre was owned and operated by the Ewings of Fayette, Mississippi, as was the Fay Theatre in Fayette and the AutoVue Drive-In in Lorman, Mississippi. The theater closed in 1967, and was damaged by a fire in 1968. After some short periods of occupancy by other businesses, it sat vacant for many years and most of the structure has collapsed.
Contributed by
Lost Memory, Sam Ewing
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Recent comments (view all 10 comments)
LM, I’m not sure if you were going to post this after you added the theater. If so, apologies. In September 2007, the Trace was being used as a nightclub, so that would be one function at least.
http://tinyurl.com/5gklxs
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/y9pkqm8
According to a brief item in Boxoffice of February 3, 1945, the Trace Theatre was to be rebuilt following a disastrous fire which had occurred in December.
The Trace was still in operation at least as late as 1964, when Stephen Abraham was mentioned as the operator in the August 17 issue of Boxoffice.
The marquee is still on the building, which is at the northeast corner of Main and Carroll Street. For some reason, Internet searches for Street View-identifiable businesses on Main Street all return addresses on Market Street. The street apparently has two names. I wonder if it’s been recently changed?
In 1988 or 1989 (or perhaps both,) the Trace Theatre served as the venue for an updated version of “Romeo and Juliet” mounted by the Cornerstone Theater Company, a group from Yale University that has staged productions in small towns in many parts of the United States. I’ve found references to other live theater events in Port Gibson from the 1980s into the 1990s, but haven’t been able to determine if any of these were also held at the Trace Theatre.
For a while, the Trace Theatre was also the site of a night club called Westside. The club’s neon sign, between the entrance doors, can be seen lit up in this photo at Flickr, uploaded November 9, 2010, though I doubt it was taken that day.
Port Gibson has a community theater group, but their venue is called the Blue Barn Theatre, and I don’t think it’s the same building as the Trace Theatre.
Additional info about the Trace: There was a fire in 1968 and the building stood damaged for several years before it was bought and later used for other purposes which, at last report, was a rowdy nightclub. The Auto Vue Drive in, Lorman, closed in 1987.
Memo to Chuck1231: That street is, for postal purposes, listed as Market Street. It has also been known, in the past, as Main Street and, many years ago, Depot Street, but the name for current day mailings is indeed Market Street.
Not sure why almost all of the information in the listing relates to a different theater in a different town. The building must have been vacant for a long time. The 1979 NRHP listing has it down as ‘ruins’, which is clearly an exaggeration, but it must still have been vacant.
Should this have an aka of Crystal? The description on the Folly has a Crystal ‘around the corner and down a block’, which would fit the Trace.
The original Trace Theatre (#1) was in the Opera House (#2) that burned down in October 1944. The Opera House (#1) had burned down in the late 19th Century taking with it Masonic Lodge #3 - third oldest in Mississippi. The Trace was rebuilt by the Odd Fellows to have a fraternal lodge opening in 1899.
As Opera Houses faded unable to make money in smaller towns, movie theaters offered an alternative to live programming. And that’s what happened as the Opera House turned to motion pictures. It then was taken over by the Abraham family which ran the Trace Theatre for decades. But the fire of October 28, 1944 ended a great track record.
The War Production Board approved a new theatre and the architectural plans of by Jackson, Mississippi architect E.G. Malvaney. It opened in 1946 and was operated by Mrs. Jake Abraham. The Abrahams closed up in late 1967. The Trace Theatre was burned in April of 1968 and reports stated that it was likely a response to the Martin Luther King assassination. The building was not properly buttoned up and suffered a lot of damage.
The Trace Theatre didn’t bring much money but apparently was viewed for a very short-lived playhouse in 1981 and 1982. It then returned to vacancy and has since lost everything except its side walls. It is definitely in ruins today.
Looking at more recent photos, it appears the upper facade collapsed before 2021. Probably not long before it gets all the way to demolished.