Discuss Detroit » Archives - Beginning July 2006 » Charles Agree's Dearborn Theater 1941-2006 « Previous Next »
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Leob
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Post Number: 78
Registered: 10-2005
Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 11:21 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Charles Agree's Dearborn Theater, after suffering for decades as a multiplex, closed for good September 4, 2006. Agree was noted for designing many great deco theaters all over Detroit and the 'burbs.
I thought I would share my collection of photos from the Agree estate with all fans of the Dearborn.
http://www.thegrandeballroom.c om/Dearborn.html

Leo B
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Gistok
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Post Number: 3065
Registered: 08-2004
Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 12:46 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

An interesting aside about Charles Agree is that he built Detroit's 3rd largest 1920's Movie Palace, the 3,434 seat Hollywood Theatre.

The Hollywood, largest neighborhood theatre in Detroit, opened in 1927 on Fort Street, not far from the Ambassador Bridge. It was quite a distance from downtown, which helped its' early demise in the early 1960's, when it was razed.

A true loss for Detroit.
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56packman
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Post Number: 717
Registered: 12-2005
Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 1:08 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Nice pictures on the Grande site--I have not seen those before. The exterior walls had enamel over metal panels depicting Dearborn in 1840 and Dearborn in 1940. These panels flanked the front doors. Showcase covered them up (or ripped them off first) with some innocuous looking material in the late 80's. They also butchered up that building something awful in an attempt to make an Art Moderne semi-palace into a mega-box cinema.
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Detroitnerd
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Post Number: 734
Registered: 07-2004
Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 2:00 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I remember when there was a bar in the lobby. How's that for old?
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Ednaturnblad
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Registered: 09-2006
Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 2:19 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I worked at the Dearborn (known in those days as the D.E.C. - Dearborn Entertainment Center)as a teenager. It was a triple at the time, with the main auditorium having been "twinned" and the storefront on the east side of the building turned into "The Living Room" - a small 100 seat theatre (for the flops!). It had the bar in the center of the rotunda lobby...the place was owned by the Shafer family which also owned the Quo Vadis (which also had a bar), the State-Wayne, the LaParisianne, and the Ford-Wyoming, Wayne, Dearborn and Algiers drive-ins. What fun it was! The theater that closed last month bears very little resemblance to the one I remember, but the entire industry has changed, of course. These old neighborhood just weren't designed to be multiplexes. I don't know if the mural "Dearborn 1941" is still on the building under the latest facade, but it was a colorful art-deco depiction of Dearborn landmarks.
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Rustic
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Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 9:32 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The Dearborn was a neat theater. As I knew it, it's main theater was split in half but it still sold booze in the lobby is a weird island style bar (kinda like how the concessions are at the Star Southfield now but tinier and alcoholic). The murals on the walls were cool and the theaters still had the neat old walls up on three sides at least. The little screening room (didn't they call it the loft or something like that?) was one of the worst places to see a movie in metro detroit, imo second only to the Telex shoeboxes and actually WORSE than the small theaters at Fairlane mall or those crummy theaters at the mall in Hazel Park. For martial arts afficianados, AIR the Dearborn was the only first run suburban theater to regularly show Karate movies. It was one of the few older standalone theaters in the metro area to make it into the 80's still showing first run movies. When it was remodelled as a multiplex it looked like they simply put a giant cinderblock box over what was the last gasp of prewar theater beauty in metro Detroit.

Oh yeah in addition to drunks it was also VERY popular with popular with stoners (Hines Park crowd). On the right weekend and the right movie it was as if the residual smoke from their jeans jackets and army coats could get you baked.
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Bob_cosgrove
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Post Number: 410
Registered: 03-2005
Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006 - 9:48 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The Hollywood was on the south side of Fort Street one or two blocks west of East Grand Boulevard. The first time I saw it was in the mid-1950's and it was closed then.

Charles Agree is also the architect for The Whittier apartment hotel on East Jefferson Avenue at Burns Drive immediately to the west of Erma Henderson Park about a 1/2 mile east of the Belle Isle Bridge. The Whittier has been the subject of another recent thread on www.detroityes.com

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't Agree also the architect for the Vanity Ball Room still standing on the north side of East Jefferson at the River Bend (East of Connor and north of Grayhaven).

Bob Cosgrove
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Bussey
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Post Number: 337
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 8:55 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Also The Belcrest Apartments on Cass. Great old building. I spent two years there. The view of the incinerator next to the sunrise was splendid.
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Eric_c
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Post Number: 887
Registered: 11-2003
Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 1:54 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Where exactly is the Dearborn? Michigan/Telegraph?Any pics?
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Detroitnerd
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Post Number: 737
Registered: 07-2004
Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 2:00 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Yeah, Telegraph and Michigan. It was my neighborhood theater when I was a kid. I saw Close Encounters and E.T. there. My girlfriend in high school worked there too.

BTW, wasn't Showcase recently involved in some brouhaha where they were discouraging black moviegoers somehow?
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Busterwmu
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Post Number: 294
Registered: 09-2004
Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 7:21 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I lived just a couple blocks away from Dearborn High School so that was our neighborhood theatre too. Even after the Star Fairlane opened, when we felt poor, we went to the Showcase. Too bad it closed it was an anchor on the corner of Michigan and Telegraph for decades.
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1953
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Post Number: 1120
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Posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 7:42 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The Devil and Miss Jones and Strawberry Blonde are two of my favorite movies! Ahh! To have been alive in 1941!
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Carchivist
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Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 11:33 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I worked a number of years at the Dearborn in the late 80s up to 1990. Before we get too carried away on how the theatre looked in the past, by 1989 it was a mess. Shag carpet on the wall was grey in color, that is until a manager had them steam cleaned in 1988 and we found out the color was off-white! The marquee in front was torn down in 1965 due to the expansion of Michigan Ave. The candy stand was home to many mice and petrified popcorn from decades past (all discovered during the remodeling). The bar had been gone for years. The seats were original, and a mess. The 1989 remodeling was a god-send and kept the theatre alive for another 15 years. 66 year run is pretty darn good. Personally, my favorite moment. The three day run of Run-DMC's Tougher than Leather movie. Gunfire, fights, gangs, kids out for fun (by the way, at this time the theatre never carded anyone and teens and pre-teens had no problem buying tickets for R rated movies), people showing off their weapons, a dozen Dearborn cop cars, and the police telling the theatre to pull the movie when Saturday night was more the same from Friday. Tougher than Leather also had the distinction of closing down the Adams Theatre downtown, when someone was shot dead in the lobby on its opening night. I remember crotching down in the lobby phone booth with a customer calling 911 while an entire line of movie goers standing in line buying tickets ran down the street when someone decided to show off their piece... lots a fun there. :-)
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Ericdfan
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Post Number: 179
Registered: 08-2005
Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 11:56 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

anyone know what they plan on doing with the building/site?
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Detroitnerd
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Username: Detroitnerd

Post Number: 751
Registered: 07-2004
Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 12:27 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

That corner is kind of cursed. I remember there used to be a bar and grill on the southeast corner of mich-tel that never could make a go of it, though several people tried. Now it's a storage space, I think.
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Jjaba
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Post Number: 4489
Registered: 11-2003
Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 1:57 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

DEARBORN THEATER. 24105 MICHIGAN AVE. DEARBORN, MICHIGAN.
Built 1941, Art Moderne styling.
Charles N. Agree and Reitsman, Architects.
Cost, $212,000.00 1,498 seats.
(Has resemblence to the Ford Rotunda.)

Closed Sept. 04, 2006, Kaput.

Was on Wisper and Wetsman movie circuit.

Became Showcase Cinemas Dearborn, 1-8.

In 1969, 300 seats were added in new addition called Dearborn Living Room.
The Dearborn was similar to Agree's ROYAL THEATER, 10709 W. Seven Mile Rd., of 1940. It was closed 1969. 2,496 seats. Property sold to Grace Hospital. Kaput.

============================== ==================

THE HOLLYWOOD THEATER, 4809W. Fort St. was built by Agree with Mayger and Graven in 1927. Closed, kaput 1958.

This was a Spanish facade, owned by Ben and Lou Cohen, Detroit's 2nd largest theater with 3,436 seats. The project cost was $2 Million.

In 1963, the bldg. was razed for a parking lot.

jjaba, research dept.

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