Shuttered for 3 decades, ‘magnificent’ movie palace now a coming attraction

Movie theaters were once some of Kentucky’s most beloved buildings, and their architecture reflected it. They were grand and glitzy palaces of culture, where fantasies were indulged and memories were made.

Many of these theaters have been restored, including Lexington’s Kentucky, Louisville’s Palace, Frankfort’s Grand and Bowling Green’s Capitol. Many others, including Lexington’s Strand and Ben Ali, fell to the wrecking ball.

For three decades, Paducah’s 1927 Columbia Theatre has survived in limbo as community leaders tried to figure out a way to save it. Finally, it looks as if they have.

“It’s a magnificent building,” said Darlene Mazzone, the publisher of Paducah Life magazine and part of a group that has worked three years to begin restoration of the Columbia. “But it’s a big project.”

Columbia Theatre Restoration recently finished raising $150,000 to hire the Cleveland architectural firm Westlake Reed Leskosky to develop a plan for restoring and converting the theater into a three-screen theater and stage performance venue.

Earlier, the group hired International Fine Art Conservation Studios of Atlanta to restore the stage’s giant fire screen, which includes a hand-painted mural of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. Asbestos has been removed and tons of junk hauled out. Grant money is being sought to finish lead paint abatement.

The next step will be raising $7 million to $8 million for the complete restoration. Mazzone expects a capital campaign to be launched in a year or so. That may seem like a lot of money to raise in a city of 25,000 people with a metro area of fewer than 100,000. But Paducah understands the value of arts, culture and historic preservation. The city’s historic downtown district has become a regional tourist destination.

Paducah lies along the Ohio River just below where the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers flow in. It was once a major river port, railroad center and manufacturing hub.

As the economy changed in the 1980s, Paducah began turning to its rich history and culture. In 1991, Paducah opened the National Quilt Museum, which attracts more than 40,000 visitors a year.

Paducah launched the Artist Relocation Program in 2000, offering incentives for artists to move there and renovate historic downtown buildings. Three years ago, UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — designated Paducah as the world’s seventh “city of crafts and folk art.”

An 1,800-seat performing arts center was built downtown in 2003 for the Paducah Symphony Orchestra and major road shows. Bob Dylan, this year’s Nobel laureate in literature, is scheduled to perform there Oct. 30 to a sold-out crowd.

On the other end of the theater scale is Maiden Alley Cinema, a small movie house on the historic riverfront that shows foreign, independent and documentary films. Restoring the Columbia will give the Maiden Alley organization three more screens to work with, Mazzone said.

When the Columbia opened on April 18, 1927, it was a sight to behold: an exterior of classical Greek and Byzantine architecture clad in blue and white glazed terra cotta tile. The marquee and blade had 5,000 electric lights. Louisville architect W. Earl Gore designed a more subtle interior in the 18th century Adamesque style.

When television began cutting into the theater’s business in the 1950s, the Columbia was renovated in flamboyant “Skouras” style, named for three movie mogul brothers, Charles, George and Spyros Skouras.

By the 1970s, downtown theaters were struggling to compete with suburban multiplexes. That led to a heavy-handed 1976 renovation that turned the balcony into a separate theatre and destroyed or obscured some of the building’s historic fabric. A huge stained glass skylight was painted over.

The Columbia closed in 1987. In 2003, the Keiler family donated the Columbia to the city, which installed a new roof to stabilize the building. Paducah’s Main Street group — part of a Kentucky Heritage Council program that has helped revitalize many downtowns statewide — launched efforts to restore the Columbia as an economic anchor on the South end of Broadway.

“We determined this needed to be our signature project,” Mazzone said. “We had just lost a building down a few blocks and we said we cannot lose this one. It’s really in pretty good shape considering it’s been closed for 30 years. There’s a lot of good stuff left.”

This story was originally published October 25, 2016 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Shuttered for 3 decades, ‘magnificent’ movie palace now a coming attraction."