James Theater

dallasmovietheaters on February 21, 2025 at 7:33 pm

The Rex Auditorium Theatre opened in 1927 in the James Street African American business corridor in Goldsboro known as the Block within Little Washington. Little Washington was annexed in 1869 serving as a home for post-Civil War African Americans. The business corridor followed with the Block home to restaurants, barbers, and other businesses catering to an African American clientele.

The Rex was taken on by a new operator, H.B. Mitchell Theatres of Florida which operated a number of African American cinemas, in its first year. Mitchell renamed it as the Yoland Theatre mixing live stage and film content. H.R. Mason of the Mason Theatre took over the venue as its third operator in the same year making it no longer African American owned but appealing to the same audience. It was wired for sound to remain viable. Robert L. Baum took on the Rex Theatre in 1938 and gave it a streamline moderne makeover becoming the James Theatre for African American patrons in 1938. The theater suffered a fire in April of 1944 requiring a $13,000 repair for its June 26, 1944 relaunch.

The James booked virtually every African American film of the period from Sack Amusements, Astor Pictures and others. It appears to have gone out of business in 1962 or 1963.

The city’s long gestating urban renewal plan looked to be the end of the building. But as Little Washington was being demolished all around it, the theater building actually survived another 30 years being used in the 1970s as an event center mostly for boxing matches, a fraternal hall / pool hall, a storage facility. Damaged by fire in 1987, it was vacated and demolished in the early 1990s.

NightHawk1 on March 16, 2014 at 3:24 am

If the address listed above is correct then the James Theater has been demolished. However, there is a building on the southwest corner of South James and West Spruce Streets (301 South James?) that looks like it could have been a movie theater at one time.