Highland Theatre - Akron, Ohio
N 41° 05.800 W 081° 32.640
17T E 454315 N 4549631
Highland Theatre, 826 W Market St, Akron, Ohio
Waymark Code: WM8XKH
Location: Ohio, United States
Date Posted: 05/27/2010
Views: 3
The Highland Theatre's first manager, Harry Brown Jr., planned a splendid gala event for the opening night of the Highland. It opened March 31, 1938. Four thousand watt Hollywood-style floodlights swept the sky. Beauty queens and white uniformed ushers welcomed the guests to this new theatre. Akron Mayor Lee D. Schroy told the crowd "We must admire and respect the confidence displayed by its owners in building and opening the new Highland in a period of trying times. It is this same spirit that has carried Akron through difficult days in the past and will do so again in the future."
The movie that opening night was "Swing Your Lady." It starred Humphrey Bogart before he became Sam Spade or Rick Blaine, and featured Ronald Reagan before he became President. The tickets that night were 25 cents for adults, 10 cents for children.
There were originally supposed to be two theatres - the Highland and the Akron. The latter would have been built east of S Highland Ave, but it never came to fruition. Work on the Highland began in March 1937, and except for a seven week work stoppage due to a strike at the Newton Falls steel supplier, work continued for a year. This new and thoroughly modern theatre was built by the Wallace Construction Co. of Akron for Cleveland's Monogram Realty Co. Company founder Lew Wallace and sons Don, Blaine Sr. and Lyn Wallace led a team of more than 150 laborers. The "amazingly modern" theater cost $300,000 to build -- almost $4.5 million in 2009 dollars.
Blaine Wallace, whose grandfather founded Wallace Construction, remembers helping on the job site as an eight-year old boy. One day, as the theatre neared completion, he and his father climbed a ladder to just above the marquee. The workers were just completing the coping stone. "He (Blaine's father) wrote on a piece of paper my name and address and the date, and he put down some mortar, and put this note right on top of the mortar, and he laid the coping stone right on top of that." As long as the theatre stands, young Blaine Wallace’s name will be up there.
The Highland was meant to be an elegant theatre, creating a dignified, dark and romantic air. It gave "every luxury, comfort and convenience." It was advertised as an "exquisitely intimate, amazingly modern, homelike, comfortable, luxurious" theatre, "specially constructed for the perfect presentation of talking pictures."
The residents of Highland Square would walk to the theatre that they came to know so well. On Saturdays, the films ran continuous; a newsreel, cartoon, serial installment, and then the feature. If you walked in late, you just stayed to where you came in on the next run.
Year Theater Opened: 1938
Ticket Price (local currency): 7.00 (listed in local currency)
Matinee Price (local currency): 7.00 (listed in local currency)
Number of Screen(s): 1
Concessions Available: yes
Web site: [Web Link]
|
Visit Instructions:
Must take a photo of the theater.
Please try to include yourself or gps in the picture.
Tell of your experience at the theater, if it is still a theater. If it is no longer a theater tell of an experience from the past at the theater, if this can be done.