Booker-T Theatre
182 N. West Market Street,
Reidsville,
NC
27320
182 N. West Market Street,
Reidsville,
NC
27320
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The address is rendered incorrectly. There is a West and East Market on either side of the railroad tracks, and they each have N or S addresses. Therefore, this should be N West Market.
If, as seems almost certain, this was the old Gem/Penn, the building was a two story brick commercial building built sometime between 1901 and 1908. The ground floor was split into two storefronts, and the theater was in the southern one. The 1914 map shows a general store there, but the theater appears on the 1922 map. Given the seating increase, it may have been expanded to take the entire building at some later date.
By the way, the ‘power plant’ is an American Tobacco Company factory, which makes or made Lucky Strikes. There was an existing factory to the north, but it was expanded, probably just after the theater closed.
A city directory might make a mistake in one edition, but the owner of the business that had been givent he wrong address would be sure to get a correction in the next edition. The Booker T Theatre is listed at 182 N West Market in at least three Reidsville directories (I haven’t checked the ones published after 1955-56.)
I would guess that the theater was probably where the power plant is now. The power plant look and adjacent buildings (which front on Scales Street) look fairly modern to me- probably from the 1960s or 1970s. Judging from the positions of the older buildings to the north and south on West Market Street, it looks like the street’s alignment was shifted forty or fifty feet, too.
I have also come to suspect that the Booker T Theatre could have been the same house that was earlier called the Gem Theatre and then the Penn Theatre. It was listed at 92 N West Market in 1941, but in 1948 it is gone and the Booker T is listed at 182 N West Market. Between 1941 and 1948, Reidsville renumbered its lots, eliminating all one and two-digit addresses. The Penn could have been renamed the Booker T during the same period. Renaming seems more likely than that a new theater would have been built during a period when theater construction was severely limited by the War Production Board.
The 1948-49 and 1952-53 Reidsville directories have the Booker T Theatre listed at 182 N West Market Street.