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If Kenneth Gamble Hasn’t Restored It By Now, He Will Never Never Never, Etc.

For many Philadelphia residents, the historic Royal Theater on South Street has never been known as an actual theater, just a mural-sided blight. And now, in a time where some small improvements are actually being made to South Street, the Royal is still sitting there untouched.

According to The Daily News,the Kenneth Gamble (of Gamble and Huff) owned Universal Companies currently owns the property, and has since 2000. The company has received hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to refurbish the building. And what they do with all of that money? As far as anyone can tell, nothing. The building, which opened in May 1920 as a first-run movie house “operated for and by black Americans,” sits on both national and local historical registers. The DN continues that, “later came live performances from Bessie Smith, Pearl Bailey and Fats Waller, whose portraits are included in the colorful murals decorating the building.”

The building is not only deteriorating from the outside, with “treelike weeds and bushes” sprouting from the building. A quick image search for pictures of the inside finds that this is the state of the building’s interior.

The DN story dives into the reasons (or excuses depending on who you side with) that the building has barely been touched, but one thing is for sure, this once beautiful, historic building that could be the center of a revitalized South Street is being left to crumble.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 at 11:44 am.

  • ambiguator

    The $250,000 mentioned in the article must have been a money laundering scam, because all that money sure as shit didn’t go into any repairs or maintenance of the building.

    I work on this block of South St, and I’m here 5 days a week. Only one time in the last four years has there been any work whatsoever done on the Royal: contractors replaced a downspout… That’s one expensive f’ing downspout.

  • http://www.lordwhimsy.com/ lord_whimsy

    It’s the Philly paradox: some truly special places in Philly have been spared because there isn’t enough money to demolish them (eg. Richmond Electrical Station), while others like the Royal and the USS Olympia slowly rot from lack of funds or sheer neglect.

  • schmapty

    I’m all for saving it and redeveloping it but if there isn’t a use for it I’d rather see it knocked down than sit there blighted. It looks like old theatres aren’t of much use anymore. They’re lovely and I appreciate that but movie going has changed and the glut of new live performance venues for Kimmel to UT have made them obsolete or impractical.

  • BenOnTen

    Kenneth Gamble: A study in hyper extended laurel resting.
    Keep collecting those increasingly meaningless ‘legacy’ awards, champ. So long as his well-kissed ass never gets a publicly outraged fire lit under it, the Royal will continue to rot into the ground under his ownership.