DEATH, be not PROUD

Is saving the Lakewood Theater worth the trouble?

Lakewood has plenty of old churches, but not one that most everyone attends. The Lakewood Country club, established in 1912, predates most of the neighborhood’s homes, but membership is exclusive.

Neighbors have walked the halls of Woodrow Wilson High School since 1928, making it the logical connection between past, present and future generations.

But in terms of a neighborhood symbol, the obvious choice is the Lakewood Theater, and not just because of its emblematic 100foot neon-lit tower.

“Nothing else represents Lakewood’s commercial history like that theater,” says East Dallas architect and preservationist Norman Alston. “In its time, the Lakewood Theater served the purpose for past generations as the one place everyone went, the place where people went out to see people and be seen.

“More than any other building in Lakewood, it embodies the history of the neighborhood.”

The question is what it’s worth — to neighbors, to the theater’s owners, to the City of Dallas — to preserve that history.

Karl Hoblitzelle spared no expense on the theater’s art deco design when he constructed the theater in 1938 at the tail end of the Great Depression. At the time, glamorous movie theaters peppered Dallas, and the Lakewood has outlasted most of its singlescreen counterparts.

The tower’s neon lights have gone dark twice since it opened due to market shifts. But more than seven decades and four owners later, the theater has remained, essentially, a theater.

That is likely to change after this month, however. The current tenant’s lease is up at the end of January, and the theater’s owners have indicated a strong possibility that it will be carved up into two or three spaces to accommodate dining or retail tenants.

Craig Kinney, part of the Willingham -Rutledge partnership that purchased the southwest strip of the Lakewood shopping center in 2007, says the owners “would absolutely do nothing on that tower or change the exterior. That’s one of the reasons we bought it. It’s a great asset to us. Everybody knows the Lakewood Theater.”