Warner Building construction 1931

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Uploaded on: March 24, 2026

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Excavation at Sixth Avenue North and Church Street for the future Warner Building and Theater, 1931 March 3 Photograph of the construction site at Church Street and Sixth Avenue North for the future Warner Building. Two men are seen working in the excavation site with pickaxes, hammers, and trucks for hauling debris. Onlookers stand at the railing beside McKendree Methodist Church. Lebeck Brothers department store is visible across the street from the construction site and there is an advertisement for the Cain-Sloan Co. department store on the building beside Lebeck’s. Warner Brothers Theaters, Inc. hired local architects Thomas Marr and Joseph Holman to design the 12-story office building and theater in downtown Nashville, Tennessee in June of 1930. Foster and Creighton Company undertook excavation of the site in early 1931 and the office building opened the following year. The theater would not open until 1952. In 1951 the Warner Building was renamed after the late Tony Sudekum, who founded the Crescent Amusement Company that owned the office building. The Tennessee Theater opened in 1952 on the first floor of the Sudekum Building. Both the theater and the Sudekum building were demolished in the late 1980s. The building across the street is still standing. Forms part of the Nashville Public Library and Archives -Nashville Room Historic Photographs Collection.