August 05, 2005
If walls could talk
East End Movie Theater
By the post office, North Twenty-fifth Street, between Clay and Marshall
At the moment I don't have a picture of the front of the old East End theater. I've always found the remains of the sign (that rusty thing hanging out over the sidewalk) quite interesting. The sign is presently a pigeon condo, as evidenced by the pile of pigeon poo beneath it. I like to imagine the sign brightly painted, with light bulbs chasing around the edge.
Ever since I moved to Church Hill in 1992, the theater has been empty. Some time before then, it was owned by a church (heck, it may even have been the church) which used it for their thrift shop. The thrift shop had been open recently enough that people still left piles of old clothes at the entryway, in lieu of making a proper donation at a shop that was actually open.
Last winter, I peeked inside the theater when I found the door ajar and saw that it was even more of a shell than I imagined: part of the roof was gone, the house was filled with thrift store junk, nothing remained of the theater fixtures that I could see. Some signs appeared on the front a while ago, belonging to, if I recall correctly, the company that renovated quite beautifully the house on the lot adjoining the theater. And after the house was finished up, things started happening to the theater! The trees growing through the fire escape were cut away, junk and weeds were cleared away from the walls, and a great big hole was cut in one of the sides.
This is encouraging. The theater will probably not be torn down. But what is it going to become?
The theater's preference is clear.
300 words | August 5, 2005 07:51 PM | Ghost signs