The Carolina Theatre - Spruce Pine, NC

The Carolina Theatre was  an 1939 Art-Deco Movie Theater. It was built by S. T. Henry, a New York Engineer that moved to Spruce Pine in the 1920.  It was built for the Cherokee Amusement Company, a regional movie theater chain. The Cherokee Amusement Company was ruthless in their tactics and made a deal with movie studios lock out their competition's (The Piedmont Theater) ability to book major studio films. The Cherokee Amusement Company was charged with Anti-Trust actions and the chain and their practices were broken up.  The Carolina Theater, looking for a way to bring in more people to the large house started the Carolina Barn Dance. It was a weekly country music event where regional singers and musicians performed. The radio station in Marion decided to broadcast the weekly show and the show took off, with many stations across the country playing the weekly show. This national attention thus attracted national stars to perform, such as Patsy Cline, Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow, Sonny James, Kitty Wells, Chet Atkins, String Bean, Scotty and Lula Belle Wiseman, and Fiddlin' Red Wilson performed her live on stage.  Over the years, the Carolina theater changed, the Carolina Barn Dance ended and the theater was converted to a 2 Screen cinema, after years of neglect, the theater closed and remained closed for over 25 years. It was sold recently and redevelopment plans are being created.

The building has been recently had it's interior gutted, there were not much  historic elements that survived the years of remodeling by previous owners. The building was originally designed with two small restaurants, a sandwich shop and an ice cream/pop corn shop. The property, even with the rich history, is not a historic property according to the National Register of Historic Places. This is due to the fact that there were so many changes to the exterior over the years, hardly any historic fabric of the architecture remains.

Located in Downtown  Spruce Pine at 91 Locust Street