Archive for the ‘Opera House’ tag
Edens Opera House, 301 Society Street (Clio): 1950s 1 comment
To the best of my memory, I had never been in Clio until July when I drove through on SC-9. The town has obviously seen better times; Wikipedia says the current population is 726, but the downtown is still mostly intact if often vacant.
In the early years of the 20th though, it was a bit of a boom-town as the railroad came through, and took advantage of that to put up a Vaudeville theater to host acts travelling from New York to Miami. It was called an Opera House as such things tended to be, because that sounded classier.
According to The SC Picture Project and The Eccentric South, the place survived as a theater into the 1950s.
Currently it seems to be mostly empty, with a retail operation in the lower corner that looked not to have been open in a while. In the meantime, the pocket sized local police department hangs off the other side.