Wells Theater 

(1913- Present)

By David Dennie, SMC Reference Librarian. May 2023.

By Harry C. Mann, Abt 1913

The Wells Theater, located at 108 E. Tazewell Street in downtown Norfolk, was built in 1912(1) by theatrical entrepreneurs and brothers Jake and Otto Wells(2), at a cost at the time of $105,000.(3)  The theater, designed to seat 1,650 people(4), opened on August 26, 1913, with a performance of the musical play “The Merry Countess”. On the occasion of the theater’s opening, congratulatory telegrams were sent to the Wells brothers by “such notables as Oscar Hammerstein, the Schuberts… and other theatre managers from across the country.”(5)


Over the next two decades the Wells hosted performances by numerous prominent performers, including Fred and Adele Astaire, Douglas Fairbanks, John Philip Sousa, and the touring company of the Metropolitan Opera.(6) After being purchased by a North Carolina company in 1935(7), the theater became a movie house.(8) By the early 1960s(9), the stage of the theater had been walled off from the movie house and converted into a nightclub called the Jamaica Room, with an entrance on Monticello Avenue.(10) The theater itself was showing X-rated films by the 1970s.(11)


In 1979 the Virginia Stage Company took over the lease on the theater from the owners, Craver Investment Corp. of Durham, North Carolina, renovated the theater and began once again presenting stage performances there in 1980.  The stage company completed another renovation, at a cost of $3.5 million, later in the 1980s.(12)


In 2013 the theater company acquired funding from philanthropists Patricia and Douglas Perry, who donated the purchase price, and bought the theater from the Craver company for $100,000, in what was described as a “sweetheart deal”. G. Rhodes Craver of Craver Corp. remarked that “It’s [the Wells] an important historic landmark to preserve at all costs.” Soon after purchasing it, the Virginia Stage Company gave the Wells Theater to the City of Norfolk.(13)


As of May 2023, the Virginia Stage Company continues to present theatrical productions in the Wells Theater, at the corner of Tazewell Street and Monticello Avenue in downtown Norfolk, the same location it has occupied since August 1913.


 Sources:


Street Address: 108 E. Tazewell Street, Norfolk, Virginia 23510 (1912-Present)

Name (Original): Wells Theater

Architect: E. C. Horn & Sons (New York, New York)

Contractor: East and Hobbs (Norfolk, Virginia)

Architectural Style: Beaux Arts Classicism

Cost (Original): $105,000

Construction Date: 1912-1913

Opening Date: August 26, 1913

Demolition Date:

GPS: 36.8513, -76.2897

Major Keywords/Search Terms: 

Wells Theater | Theaters | Theatres | Otto Wells | Jake Wells | Tazewell Street | Norfolk, Virginia | Arts | Entertainment | Plays | Culture | Performing Arts | Downtown Norfolk |

Sources:

 

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                                 City Directories: (selective)

 

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2)    Secondary Sources:

 

             1)    Books and Pamphlets:

 

             2)    Documents/Collections:

 https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/122-0067/