Colony Theatre

Lauren Durbin on December 31, 2005 at 6:28 am

Here is a picture of this theater that I took in the spring of 2005.

kencmcintyre on February 1, 2008 at 11:05 am

Here is the website for the current occupant:
http://www.5pointfellowship.org/

Joe Vogel on June 1, 2009 at 11:09 pm

The “Just Off the Boards” feature of Boxoffice Magazine, issue of December 8, 1945, includes a drawing of the Colony Theatre. The text reads in part

“…on this page (at left) is the front elevation perspective by architect Robert Boller of Kansas City, MO., for the new Colony Theatre, now under construction at Easley, S.C…..”

The drawing shows the same building seen in the photos linked in various comments above. The text also says that a local firm acted as supervising architects, but one initial of the name is unreadable in the scan of Boxoffice. The firm was W. _. Freeman, Jr. & Associates of Greenville.

Joel Armistead (comment of Oct 1, 2004, above) must have gotten an incomplete version of his family’s history. The theater his grandparents ran in Easley in the 1920s was not the Colony but the Lyric.

An article about Harold Armistead, based at least in part on an interview, was published in the October 18, 1971, issue of Boxoffice, shortly after he had sold the Colony and retired. It said that Harold Armistead’s father had come to Easley in 1923, when he bought the Lyric Theatre on Main Street. Harold Armistead was operating the Lyric at least as late as 1950, the last year in which I can find it mentioned in Boxoffice.

This article also said that Armistead had opened the Colony Theatre in 1948. As construction was reported to have been underway in late 1945, that was a very long time for building. Perhaps the 1945 Boxoffice item was premature in announcing the start of construction. There can be no doubt of the 1945 date for the Boller design, though.

There’s also a brief item in the June 7, 1947, issue of Boxoffice saying that Harold Armistead was building a $35,000 theater at Easley. As the Colony looks to have been a considerably more costly building, I think this unnamed house might have been the theater for black patrons Armistead built and operated in then-segregated Easley for a few years, which was also mentioned the 1971 article.

ashevillenc on April 21, 2010 at 12:55 pm

and if im not mistaken,, that looks alot like jons car that he used to drive ( up until a few years ago!!!!) in that pic of 1984 colony, (not the bug) he still has that car in the backyard of the house to this day.

Joe Vogel on March 17, 2014 at 10:23 pm

Here is the page with Robert Boller’s drawing of the Colonial Theatre in Boxoffice of December 8, 1945. Despite the long delay in construction, the drawing looks very much the same as later photographs of the theater as actually built.