New Arista Theatre

There were three Arista Theatres in downtown Lebanon, Kentucky. The first on Main Street burned down within a year of opening. The second left at the end of a leasing period. This entry is for the third venue, a Streamline Moderne style venue next to the post office and Dick Abell and Garland Dever’s Abell-Dever Motor Company. Architected by Thomas J. Nolan of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the $40,000 movie house was built by Skilton & Sanders of Louisville for J.P. Hundley.

The New Arista Theatre was patterned after the deco-influenced designs of the Century of Progress Expo in Chicago. The “old” Arista closed on December 22, 1935 with Norma Shearer in “Smilin' Through”. The Motiograph projector was moved along with 350 seats from the old venue to the New Arista joining the new leather-lined seats and the improved RCA sound system. The New Arista Theatre opened on time for a Christmas Day 1935 launch, with W.C. Fields in “David Copperfield” and Peggy Conklin in “One Way Ticket”.

In July of 1954, Harold Chapman installed widescreen projection to allow for CinemaScope film exhibition as the Arista Theatre (which had dropped “New”) competed against television. The venue appears to have closed December 19, 1959 likely reaching the end of lease. The building was offered for sale and then auctioned off on September 8, 1960 as theaters in towns of around 5,000 struggled. But it came back to life on October 28, 1960 reopening as the New Arista Theatre with Gary Cooper in “The Naked Edge” and Jim Davis in “The Gambler Wore a Gun”. The Arista Theatre appears to have discontinued advertisements following the October 22, 1972 showings of “Wild Riders” starring Alex Rocco, and John Alderman in “The Pink Angels”.

The theatre was refreshed and its floor leveled for a short-lived roller-skating rink. It then became a long-running antique mall and auction house until closing in 1999. The city acquired the property and demolished it in the early-2000’s first for a parking lot and then for a new city services building.

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