In the small city where I grew up -- Greenville, SC -- there were many attractions, not the least of which was the city's "Main Street" on which there were no fewer than four "downtown" movie theaters, one featuring the largest CinemaScope screen in South Carolina (and it was a former vaudeville theater, to boot). I spent many wonderful Saturdays in that theater. Fortunately for me, the inevitable didn't happen until I moved away. The Carolina Theater was razed so that a Hilton Hotel could be built upon the site. I had lunch there one day in the mid-1970s with my former college roommate. That hotel has long since been razed and another hotel structure has taken its place. The Carolina was where I saw all the films released by 20th Century-Fox, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists. It's where I saw the 1963 re-release of "The Robe", the 1964 re-release of "South Pacific", and where I saw "The Sound of Music" in its "Roadshow Engagement."
The Fox Theater was across the street and one block down. I saw all my Disney features/animated classics there, plus my Universal films (all the Doris Day, Rock Hudson movies played there)...and, most important of all, it's where I saw "To Kill A Mockingbird".
Across the street from the Fox (on the same side as the Carolina) but down the street two more blocks were two older houses -- the Paris Theater and the Center Theater. Both were named something else in their days of glory, and you could see glimmers of that glory in the interior architecture. One had a balcony that was always closed. Both these houses were second-run/revival houses. One occasionally delved into soft porn/blue movies, but not very often. All are now gone.
The neighborhoods around the city I discoverd when I began driving. Great broad, tree-lined streets; houses with huge, generous porches/verandas/balconies; wonderful flowering shrubbery and annuals in their gardens. At any time of the year, it was a treat just to drive through those neighborhoods.
Happily, most are still there and are being tended by a younger generation who are lovingly preserving the original concepts of those houses and yards, at least on the exterior.
The first neighborhood I lived in there is nearly identical today to what it was in 1957. Driving through the Overbrook Park district (and part of the City's historical register now), I am able to smell the air and wood smoke and to imagine myself as I bicycled along those streets -- the same houses, the same trees (they look the same to me because I am older and taller now, as are they). Many of the houses look the same. The one we lived in for a couple of years is unchanged save for the side porch having been enclosed. The picture window out of which I watched my first snowfall still looks the same.
My mom and I go back every December for a day and drive around those 'hoods and we remark how changed things look or how the same things look. What is really strange, at times, is how certain buildings remain the same, but their functions have changed dramatically.
Most egregious change of all, however, remains the loss of the Carolina Theater. The building where the Fox Theater was remains unchanged, but the interior has been gutted over time and the marquee removed and replaced with a store front.
Sigh.
