Lost History of the Roxy Theatre
A grainy old photo shows a crowd lining the sidewalks outside the Roxy Theatre.
It stands as proof that the Quonset-style hut with a movie marquee was once a thriving business in the heart of a black community.
“As your mind will, as you get older, give you pictures of days gone by and things of the past. When I go through there I see what was there in my mind’s eye and it was a thriving community,” said Leroy Thomas, who grew up in the neighborhood where the Roxy operated.
The area was considered part of the Tybee community and known colloquially as the ‘Greenwood Bottoms,’ he said.
“The Roxy Theatre was a black theatre. Macon was completely segregated,” Thomas said. “We’re talking about the 50s and early 60s. There were three black theatres in Macon: the Roxy, the Douglass, and the Vineville Branch Theatre. But there were four theaters in Macon: the Grand, the Bibb, the Rialto, and the Capitol, but those were basically white theaters.”
He said he lived three blocks from the Roxy and saw movies and live entertainment there.
“The first major motion picture that I ever saw in my life was ‘The Ten Commandments’ with Charlton Heston,” Thomas said. ”And as one that attended the ‘Teenage Parties,’ there would be talent shows on Saturdays. Now I vaguely remember Otis Redding participating in the talent shows at the Roxy before he moved on to the Douglass Theater.”
The Roxy marquee is long gone. The box office is gone too, replaced by a less grand and fading wooden sign identifying the building as The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith.
The Church is gone now too. The City Directory stopped listing the address in 2003 but it’s not clear how long the property has been vacant.
A lot of what happened inside that building when it was a theater and later when it became a church is lost. Tax and property records provide some clues to the building’s history but not the full picture.
The Civic & Community journalism class at Mercer University spent the semester of making calls, sending emails, requesting interviews and pursuing leads — more than 50 in all — yielded some information about the building’s history. But there were lots of things we didn’t learn.
Much of the land surrounding the theater was owned by the Kaplan family back to the 1930s, and according to tax records, parcels were divided over the years and given to relatives.
Phil Kaplan owned the property during the time the Roxy was in operation. He died in the 1990s and two of his children — Sue Kaplan and Tom Kaplan — said they were so young when the Roxy was open, they didn’t recall much.
“I was a young kid who loved to go watch cowboy movies… Roy Rogers, Lash Larue, Hopalong Cassidy, Rocky Lane,etc.,” Tom Kaplan said in an email. “I usually sat upstairs, where there was a very small balcony and Daddy’s office.”
The Roxy Theatre first shows up in the city directories in 1951 and it was listed until 1958. For part of those years, property records show the Nashville-based Highland Theatre Company was leasing the place from Kaplan.
That lease was to run until July 14, 1961, but by 1959 the City Directory listed the property as vacant. It’s not clear what happened or why the theater closed.
“I don’t know why the Roxy went away,” said Alice Bailey, who went on her first date to the Roxy. “I think it might have had something to do with the fact that the generation, my generation, of people who had lived in Tybee, grew up in Tybee, had gone away to school, away to college … And they just didn’t have an interest in living in Tybee anymore. Stepping up, you see, and so the business changed.”
Thomas who grew up in the area said desegregation may have played a role.
“When places were integrated we left ours,” he said. “The Douglass Theatre folded because we thought that the white theatre would do something more than show a movie and add some sound to it. So we went to the white theater and the black theaters suffered — the Douglass & the Roxy.”
The Roxy also was on the fringe of the Tybee neighborhood, which became a target for urban revitalization in the 1960s.
An undated picture provided by the Kaplan family shows the Roxy surrounded by houses while other photos — presumably taken later — show the houses gone and a power substation adjacent to the theater.
“It didn’t help any, either, that that area was designated for reconstruction, for demolition, and reconstruction,” Bailey said. “So all the businesses went away. Enough of the businesses go away, [and] there’s not a reason to be in business in a location. There was a change in economics, a change in interest, a change in opportunities, and so that went away.”
Property records show The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith took over the building on Sept. 17, 1960 as part of a lease-purchase with Phil Kaplan. The agreement — signed by Bishop SC Johnson — promised to pay $5,000 up front and another $17,000 at 6 percent interest over the next nine years.
Ownership of the building was transferred to the Church once the payments were all made.
It’s not clear how long the Church used the building. They no longer have an active congregation in Macon. A main branch out of Atlanta was unable to provide any details beyond noting the former leader was dead.
The tax notices are still mailed to 445 Hazel St. and neither the Tax Assessor’s Office nor the Tax Commissioner’s office had any additional information on how to contact an owner.
A lien for unpaid taxes dates back to 2012 — the year the property lost its tax-exempt status after a county-wide review noted the building was abandoned.
The grass is still being trimmed but the neighbors don’t know who is taking care of the property.
Our lofty goals this semester included initiating some kind of recognition process for the Roxy. That can’t happen officially without owner consent but we do hope what we did find has shined a little light for some on what was once a thriving business in a thriving community.
The reporting for this story was a compilation of interviews and information gathering by students in the Fall 2015 Civic & Community Journalism class at Mercer University.
