The Jones/Hartley Building

Ned Jones built his storehouse in 1911 on South Main Street between the Harrison Building to the North and the three-story Dula Building to the South (Lenoir Topic 6/7/1911, p. 3). By December 1911 the building was nearly complete and the first tenants, a barbershop, were ready to move in to the first floor store room. Cloer's Barber Shop was equipped with large mirrors, tubs and showers, machines for electric massage, and was claimed to be "one of the handsomest and best equipped barber shops in the State" (Lenoir Topic 12/6/1911, p. 3). The second floor would be reserved for Jones' own businesses, real estate and insurance.The barber shop lasted for about a year and a half at this location when, for reasons unspecified, it was relocated in August of 1913. The first floor of the Jones Building would not be vacant for long:

Mr. F.C. Carroll spent Monday in Charlotte, buying material for his new theatre in the Jones building, which he will occupy about the 9th of September. Mr. Carroll says that it is his purpose to make his new place one of the most attractive theatres in the State. (Lenoir News 8/26/1913, p. 3)

Carroll's Princess Theatre had been located for the previous year in the Shell Building just five stores south on the same street. The next month, Carroll gets a new landlord when Jones sells his building to R.B. Hartley:

Trade in Town Property

Mr. R.B. Hartley and Mr. E. Jones, Jr., closed a deal the latter part of last week, whereby Mr. Hartley becomes the owner of the Jones building on Main street now occupied by the Princess moving picture theatre on the first floor. . . . (Lenoir News 9/23/1913, p. 3)

The following map, created with a combination of different maps and documents of the period, especially the December 1913 Sanborn map, locates the Jones and Shell Buildings, as well as the court house, Opera House, and Harshaw Building, which housed two different theaters during this time (the Red Moon Theatre and then Star Theatre were in the Harshaw building at this time):

The Princess itself changed hands in October of 1913, when E.M. Hukill buys the business from Carroll (Lenoir Topic 10/22/1913, p. 3 and Lenoir News 10/24/1913, p. 4) and Carroll leaves town. Managed by W.M. Spangler and then Will England, the Princess operated in the Hartley Building until sometime between October 1915 and February 1916, when a general merchandise store named The Leader moved into this space (Lenoir Topic 2/23/1916, p. 3).

A Photograph?

The Caldwell Heritage Museum has a photograph of the Confederate monument that used to stand in the middle of the square. The monument was unveiled in June of 1910 and is clearly the focus of this photograph:

The arrow indicates the location of the Jones Building: to the left looking down South Main and directly next door to the obvious three-story Dula Building. A closeup of this portion of the photograph gives tantalizing evidence of a large poster that might indicate that the photographer unwittingly caught the only known image of the Princess Theatre, with a few potential customers standing just outside. Here is an enlargement of the above image focusing on the theater front, a bit grainy but still recognizable as large, poster-style advertising typical of an early film theater:

This would date the photograph at some point between September 1913--if this is indeed the Princess and not a barbershop or other business--and the end of 1915 when the theater closed. It is certainly not visual proof, but it is exactly the right location and the same approximate era. Hopefully, there are more images out there . . .

After the closing of the Princess, the Jones/Hartley Building would never again be used as a film venue; by 1916 it housed a general store called The Leader (Lenoir News 2/25/1916, p. 1 and Lenoir News 3/14/1916, p. 4). By the 1920s the world had moved far beyond the day when a small store or barbershop could be converted into a theater. From then on, real theaters needed to built as theaters from the start, on a scale far different from those in the early teens in small-town America.

Dr. Gary R. Boye

Music Librarian and Professor

Appalachian State University

boyegr@appstate.edu