Coordinates: 39°28′52.18″N 86°3′18.06″W / 39.4811611°N 86.0550167°W / 39.4811611; -86.0550167
The Historic Artcraft Theatre is a classic grand movie theater in downtown Franklin, Indiana. It was built in 1922 in an Art Deco style, and was used for vaudeville and silent movies. The theater was one of the first in the area to feature cool air when it installed a swamp cooler. It served as a full-time movie theater until 2000.
In 2006, Franklin Heritage, Inc. (FHI), a non-profit which bought the theatre, received a state historic preservation grant toward its restoration. Franklin Heritage works to preserve and restore historic assets in the city. They use the theatre to show "classic" movies on the weekends, which proceeds are used toward rehabilitation. The theatre is also becoming a community center for special events: a site for private and community parties, concerts, foreign films, and a B-movie festival.
Today it plays classic movies at least more than 10 years old, and gives away prizes in late night shows. The most famous movie shown there is A Christmas Story. Tickets need to be preordered to have access to the movie because seats are usually sold out at that time.
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)