Apex Theatre

The Apex Theatre was the city’s first sound-era venue. Apex was once a town with a population of around 1,000 people even into the late-1950’s. In the silent era, downtown housed the Carolina Theatre at 103 N. Salem that operated until the silent era that closed in 1930. Costs of transitioning to sound were too expensive and the theatre was converted back to retail.

The town had an informal approach to showing movies - on the side of Seymour Store at night (126 N. Salem). But people still wanted modern talking pictures. In 1939, about ten years after the silent theatre had closed, Stewart Wade opened the Streamline Modern style Apex Theatre at 103 East Chatham Street. He also purchased his own printing press and gave merchants including the drug store - the informal alternate concessionaire to the Apex - gaudy colored window cards with that week’s features.

The theatre had a balcony for African American patrons and was often filled on weekends when westerns played. Netha A. Young ran the theatre from 1941 to April 4, 1954. In the hours after the April 3, 1954 showing of William Castle’s “Fort Ti”, flames were seen at the curtains and spreading to the plush purple velveteen walls as the theatre was being consumed with fire - likely spreading from an explosion in the projection booth. The entire business district was threatened but good initial work by the Apex volunteer fire department followed by Cary’s Fire Department implementing its recently delivered, $15k, 1953 Seagrave pumper, downtown was able to cary on. But the Apex Theatre was not rebuilt.

The town would have a population explosion and receive plans for two modern megaplexes - the Marquee Promenade with its 14-screen and the Consolidated Beaver Creek 12 both in construction in 2005. And making it to the finish line on May 5, 2006 - 52 years and a month after the Apex Theatre’s final showing - was the Consolidated Beaver Creek 12. This gave the town the remarkably rare distinction of having only one silent theater, just one sound era Hollywood Golden Age single screen theatre, (no suburban luxury cinema or multiplex), and its only megaplex (closing in 2024). This was a fairly unusual hat trick in cinema exhibition history. Well done, town turned City of Apex.

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