Random Picture of the Week #90: The Old Haven Theatre in Brookhaven, Mississippi

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This week’s random image is of quick photo I took of the Haven Theatre in Brookhaven, Mississippi one night while I was in town.

The Old Haven Theatre in Brookhaven, Mississippi

The Old Haven Theatre opened its doors as the Sarphie Theatre on June 20th, 1931 by Jack E. Sarphie. In 1935 the theatre was sold to the competing Arcade Theatre who changed the name to the Haven Theatre.

Another source says the theatre name was changed to the Haven Theatre in 1950. I’m not sure as to rest of the history. But in 1982 the old Haven Theater was purchased by the Brookhaven Little Theatre Company and renovated/remodeled to suit their needs. The theatre company has been in operation and has put son productions since 1985 and is continuing to put out new productions.

According to MDAH the Haven Theatre may have been built before 1925 and is said to be the second oldest theater in Mississippi that is still used for the performing arts. MDAH found that according to the 1925 Sanborn Map, it shows a movie theater on this site and  photographs from 1939 show the Haven marquee with a three sided canopy that extends over the sidewalk. The Haven Theatre was remodeled after World War II and is still the current layout that includes the curved glass block half-wall in the ticket booth. The canopy was altered by adding a vertical neon sign attached to the stucco plinth.

I haven had much time to research the old theater and I have people in town that I need to talk with.  At some point I will rewrite this article once  I have more details about the Old Haven Theatre.

Sources:

• Cinema Treasures – from a user comment
• Brookhaven Little Theatre
• The Mississippi Department of Archives and History

About the Images

The Old Haven Theatre image was shot using a tripod one night  using my Sony a6000 and the Sony 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS Power Zoom Lens. I then used Adobe Lightroom, and Google Nik Collection to remove noise and clean up the images.