Princess Theater

rivest266 on August 21, 2016 at 12:36 am

April 15th, 1914 grand opening ad for an Princess in photo section.

Joe Vogel on November 30, 2012 at 9:47 pm

Docsouth actually has four entries listing two theaters and one airdome called the Princess in Asheville. A Princess Theatre operated at 9 NW Pack Square from 1912 to 1925; a Princess Airdome operated from about 1913 to about 1916 at 86 Patton Avenue; A Princess Theatre operated from about 1926 to an unknown date at 30 E. College Street, and then operated under the same name as an African-American theater from about 1941 to about 1947.

The addresses Docsouth uses are obsolete. At least parts of Asheville have since been renumbered. The Princess of 1926-1947 must have been in one of two nearly-matching buildings at modern address 120 E. College and 122 E. College. I suspect that it was 120 E. College. This photo of the Majestic Theatre (old address 28 E. College) shows that the building with modern address 120 E. College was once occupied by the offices of The Asheville Times, and their printing press room, if it was on the ground floor, would probably have had a high ceiling and a clear span very suitable for conversion to a theater.

Here is linkrot repair for the photo of the Princess lostmemory linked to earlier. The movie The Cheater Reformed was released in 1921, so the photo depicts the first Princess Theatre on Pack Square, although the text below the photo mistakenly gives the address as 30 E. College. The source the page cites for the address was the 1927 city directory, so that was six years after the photo was taken and a year or two after the theater had moved.