
The Afterlives and Second Acts of America’s Movie Palaces - prismatic
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/abandoned-movie-theaters
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goda90
My hometown is where the Ringling Bros. Circus started. One of the brothers
used some of his circus fortune to build a theatre[0] in 1915. It fell in
disrepair, and they only did bits and pieces of restoration while I was
growing up. Then a few years ago they got enough funding to do a ton of
restoration, and it is beautiful. Thankfully, the people in charge of it
decided to stop trying to compete with the modern cinemas of neighboring towns
by showing new movies on the old screen and projector, and now they do classic
movie nights alongside various live performances.

[0][http://www.alringling.org/](http://www.alringling.org/)

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ebg13
More than completely abandoned ones, I love new spaces that preserve the
nature of the theaters they used to be while becoming something else, like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Theatre_(Houston)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Theatre_\(Houston\))

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LyndsySimon
We have a similar (though _much_ smaller) theater in my small town. It was
built in 1929, and was in disuse and disrepair until fairly recently.

It’s been renovated now, and feels pretty true to its roots. I’ve attended a
few plays and such there, and it really feels like stepping back to the 1950s
or so:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyric_Theatre_(Harrison,_Arkan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyric_Theatre_\(Harrison,_Arkansas\))

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jvanvleet
A wonderful single screen space in my home town was converted into a pool
hall. You picked up the balls and paid for the table at the ticket booth and
they reused the theater seats on a raised platform along the tables for
viewing. It was really something.

