CityView Magazine

14 July 2021 Old Fayetteville opera houses and movie theaters BY WEEKS PARKER FAYETTEVILLE HISTORY The S. H. Kress store in the 1920s after the Williams Opera House had been demolished. The Opera House on Person Street was also called The LaFayette Opera House. The Colony Theater on Hay Street was the first theater to be air conditioned in the 1940s. The Fayetteville High School auditorium on Robeson Street featured vaudville acts and big bands during the 1940s. ere were many theaters in Fayetteville, and most of them were on Hay Street. A popular theater that featured Western movies was the Broadway eater. Going west up Hay Street was the Miracle eater, the Colony eater, and the Carolina eater. On the north side of Hay Street was the Lyric eatre near the Pemberton Music and Player Piano Company across from the S. H. Kress building. e Ambassador eater, that was re-named the State eatre, was next door to the Prince Charles Hotel where Sears Roebuck was later built. On Haymount Hill was the Haymount eatre that is now being used as a popular performing arts venue we know as the Cape Fear Regional eatre. In addition to the many movie houses, there were numerous drive- in theaters in and near Fayetteville. Some of those drive-ins featured vaudeville acts at the end of each movie. My friend, the late Monte Hale, who was a Hollywood actor and vocalist, once appeared at the Sky View drive-in near Gillespie Street. Monte enjoyed being interviewed by me in my little radio station O ne of the first opera houses in Fayetteville was in the Williams building that was located on the corner of Hay and Maxwell streets across from the arts center that was once the post office. e opera house was on the third floor of that building that ran to the property line of the Hotel Prince Charles. Another opera house was located on Person Street across from Liberty Point. at opera house featured lovely little balconies like those in the Ford eatre in Washington, D.C. is opera house, also called the LaFayette Opera House, was later named the Strand eatre where vaudeville acts were oen featured aer some of the movies. Directly behind that building was a theater called the Ritz. e opera house was also known as "e New Market" because on the ground floor there was a meat and produce market similar to the one that had been under the Market House since about 1832. When my wife, Myra, was a kindergarten student at First Presbyterian Church, her teachers took the class to the Strand eatre to see the movie "Cinderella." Myra and the other children were greatly impressed to see the little balconies in that lovely auditorium that was inside the old opera house on Person Street. eir teachers and the class were so impressed with the movie that a few months later they produced their own live production of "Cinderella" and performed on the stage in the church fellowship hall. In 1940, the spacious auditorium of the new Fayetteville High School on Robeson Street, where the Highsmith-Rainey Memorial Hospital now stands, was used as an opera house for traveling vaudeville acts and big bands. e world-famous Von Trapp Family Singers performed in that auditorium during their tours of the United States in the 1940s. Members of the original Glenn Miller Orchestra gave a concert in the Fayetteville High School auditorium in 1950.

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