Amite Theatre
123 W. Amite Street,
Jackson,
MS
39201
123 W. Amite Street,
Jackson,
MS
39201
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The Alamo Theatre opened in 1912. It transitioned to sound to remain viable. It received a streamline moderne makeover becoming the New Alamo. A newer post-War New Alamo Theatre was built in 1948 opening in January of 1949. On January 21, 1949, the older New Alamo was renamed as the Amite Theatre. It last just short of ten years. It transitioned to a controversial bar called The Dump. It then transitioned to Bill’s Disco until being destroyed by fire December 16, 1983. The remnants were demolished in 1984.
According to Movie Theaters in Twentieth-Century Jackson, Mississippi, by Jerry Dallas, the Amite Theatre was in the same building which had earlier housed the second Alamo Theatre. Like its predecessor, the Amite was an African American house.
The second Alamo had opened as the New Alamo Theatre around 1927, and occupied the building on Amite Street for more than twenty years. Arthur Lehman leased the building from the Orkin family, and when his lease ran out Ad and Andrew Orkin renovated the house and reopened it as the Amite Theatre in January, 1949, a few weeks before the Alamo reopened in its new location on Farish Street.
The Amite Theater survived for less than a decade, closing in 1958. The new Alamo outlasted it by more than twenty years.
I remember the Amite building served as a very nice gay bar for a number of years in the 1970s.
Interesting name.