Granada

The group Princeton Theaters Inc. opened the Granada Theatre on January 2, 1928, at 537 Commerce Street in Bluefield. John Frank Gilbert (1892-1934) was president, and his brother Hallie Joseph Gilbert (1896-1969) was the secretary-treasurer of the group. They owned several more businesses in Bluefield including the Rialto theater, Flat Top Grocery and Linkous Pharmacy. The Granada was a large theater with 1,160 seats.

In the 1950s long after the death of John Frank Gilbert in 1934, the Princeton Theaters, Inc., Hallie Joseph Gilbert (president) and Raymond L. Watters (secretary-treasurer), closed the small Rialto theater. In 1956 they renovated the Granada Theatre. Later they moved to Princeton where they acquired the Lavon and Mercer theaters. By then they were showing first-run movies in all their facilities.

The Granada first opened with a silent movie “Rose of The Golden West,” starring Mary Astor and Gilbert Rowland. At that time, it had an exceptional organ, a Wurlitzer Opus 1790, Style EX, that was used in the original screenings in the 1920s accompanying the silent films being shown.

The Granada Theater was segregated during its early years. In March 1960 a group of Bluefield State College (now Bluefield State University) students, sponsored by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), protested segregated seating practices at the Colonial and Granada Theaters. They quietly marched and carried signs. Some signs read “We Are Through Walking Alleys and Entering Back Doors” and “Civil Rights Mean Human Rights.”

At the time, Bluefield State College had a predominantly black student body. They were protesting blacks having to use a rear entrance off a parking lot and sit in the balcony at the Colonial Theater. They then marched to the Granada Theater where blacks could enter the front door but also had to sit in the balcony. The segregated seating practices subsequently ended.

By the 1970s the two main theaters in Bluefield were beginning to show their age. The condition of the Granada and its main competitor, the Colonial, were beginning to deteriorate. Attendance had fallen and it was hard to keep the theaters open and profitable.

Henry Friedl, an Athens resident and Mercer County teacher and principal, remembers going to see Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” at the Granada before the theater closed. He said it was “a hoot of a movie.” The movie was released in 1974. Another person commenting on an article in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph about the Granada said, “I took my then 3-year-old daughter to see ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ in the summer of 1975.” These must have been among the last movies shown at the Granada. Don Keesling’s Blue Ridge Amusement Group owned the theater when it closed in 1977.

The original organ in the Granada was dismantled and sold in 1970 to a technician in Evansville, Indiana. When the technician passed away in the late 1990s, Robert Edmunds, a pipe organ enthusiast who grew up in Bramwell, bought the instrument from the man’s widow in 2000. Additionally, in 2009 an organ that was originally in Huntington’s Keith Albee Theater became available which Robert also purchased. Robert returned the Keith Albee organ to its original home where it played magnificently until 2015.

Meanwhile, in February 2009 the Bluefield Preservation Society was formed. It was a non-profit 501(c)3 organization focused on the restoration of the Granada Theater. After the Society acquired the old Granada building, the new owners learned that the organ was still in existence and contacted Robert when they learned he had purchased it. Robert donated the organ to the Granada Theater and helped install it in 2015. The story about the return of the Granada and Keith Albee organs was covered in several articles, including one for the American Theater Organ Society magazine, 'Theater Organ.” In discussing his role in the recovery and reassembly of the organ systems for Athens We Knew, Robert said he is pleased the “organ is back in place in its original home, as very few theaters in the US still have their resident pipe organs. The American Theater Organ Society hopes to restore as many theater organs back in theiroriginal venues, as fewer than 300 are back home.”

With the restoration of the Granada Theater completed, it reopened on August 28, 2021, for concerts, live theater and movies. The main theater auditorium was reduced to 550 seats. The balcony area has tables and chairs for dinner movies and there are two 50-seat theaters on the Raleigh Street level.