Carolina Theatre
117 S. Dargan Street,
Florence,
SC
29506
117 S. Dargan Street,
Florence,
SC
29506
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: Stewart and Everett
Previous Names: O'Dowd Theatre
Nearby Theaters
The second O'Dowd Theatre was opened in 1913. On December 25, 1933 it was renamed Carolina Theatre. It was destroyed by fire in 1939. It was rebuilt and opened on April 1, 1940 as the Carolina Theatre. It was closed in the early-1970’s. It was reopened on June 27, 1975 by Stewart & Everett. Following closure on January 22, 1984, it became a church which left the building in the 1980’s. It was taken over by the city and renovations began, with a reopening planned for spring of 2022.
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Lost Memory
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Recent comments (view all 8 comments)
Here is an October 1950 ad from the Florence Morning News:
http://tinyurl.com/m56y8o
Here is an October 1970 ad from the same source:
http://tinyurl.com/myrc3y
Façade has been restored recently. The cheap plastic marquee and ugly letters are gone, the left porthole was reopened, but for some reason they’ve mounted two industrial-looking floodlights on the front.
Abandoned Southeast has a feature on this theater. According to this site, the first Carolina Theatre was destroyed in a 1939 fire and rebuilt on the same site, with the new theater opening April 1, 1940. The Carolina showed movies into the 1970s, then hosted a church into the 1980s, then was abandoned. Eventually the City of Florence acquired the building and is said to be renovating it into an events space, with a target opening date of Spring 2022.
Reopened June 27th, 1975, as Cinema 5 by Stewart & Everett and closed or placed its last ad on January 22nd, 1984. 1975 ad posted.
This opened in 1913 as the 2nd O'Dowd theatre per
Early Florance cinema history 24 Dec 1933, Sun Florence Morning News (Florence, South Carolina) Newspapers.com
Renamed the Carolina Theatre on Christmas Day 1933.
The 1933 newspaper article claiming that the second O'Dowd Theatre was built in 1913 was mistaken. No theaters are located on South Dargan Street on the 1918 Sanborn map of Florence, and the Auditorium on W. Evans Street is still clearly labeled O'Dowd Theatre. The Carolina Theatre does appear on the 1924 Sanborn, and under that name, though the house is listed in the 1926 FDY as the O'Dowd, while the former O'Dowd on Evans Street is listed as the Opera House.
Mr. J. M. O'Dowd held the lease on the auditorium in the Florence City Hall from 1911 to 1919, when it was lost in a competitive bid to a rival. It appears that Mr. O'Dowd built his new house on Dargan Street following that event, and a 2024 article about the theater in the local Post and Courier does say that the Carolina opened in 1919 as O'Dowd’s Theatre. O'Dowd ran the theater until 1933, when he sold it to the Schnibben family, the rivals who had outbid him for the lease on the auditorium in 1919.