2011
10.14

Around 11:30 AM last monday, a fire broke out at the intersection of Chattanooga and West Villanow streets in an upstairs apartment over what used to be the Mars Theater. Flames quickly consumed the 80-year-old structure, generating an inky plume of smoke visible for miles away.

Responders from LaFayette Police Department responded promptly, followed shortly after by fire crews. Before the blaze was extinguished, firefighters from LaFayette FD, Walker County FD, and Walker State Prison were called in to keep it from spreading into adjacent buildings and a pawn shop at the end of the block.

In 1931 when the Mars was built, Chattanooga Street was the economic center of LaFayette. Central of Georgia’s rail line connecting Chattanooga to Rome was the equivalent of today’s interstate highway, funneling goods and people into and out of LaFayette and Linwood. LaFayette’s railroad depot was across the street from Mars, Coca-Cola Bottling Works was next to the depot, and all of the area’s manufacturers were within a few minutes walking distance.

The downtown square is considered LaFayette’s heart by most people today, but during the first half of the 20th century the city’s western square was just as important economically and socially as the two blocks between Cherokee and Duke. Both areas had a variety of stores, eateries, and eventually both had movie theaters; the Mars Theater on Chattanooga Street and Palace Theater on South Main.

Like everything else in the South during that time, Mars Theater was segregated. Black patrons were allowed in, but forced to use their own entrance and sit in the second-story balcony. Mars was never desegregated, closing in the 1950’s as railroad traffic declined. The building was later repurposed as a shopping center and the balcony was closed off into a separate upper floor divided into apartments.

From the late 50’s into the 1960’s Mars and surrounding buildings housed a shopping center called The Depot, presumably named after the closed rail depot nearby. Chain retailers and newer department stores eventually put The Depot out of business. Investors turned the building into a glove mill named (surprisingly enough) Mars Glove Mill, but that was also short-lived.

In recent years Mars’ lower floor was rented to “The Jesus Mission,” a loosely organized group claiming to serve the homeless. They prepared meals occasionally and served thanksgiving dinner to the community, but several observed that services were only available to homeless minorities and the building was mainly a hangout and gameroom with political material occasionally displayed in its front windows.

Jesus Mission never incorporated as a church (or as anything else) so their activities weren’t restricted, just a bit dubious for a group claiming to serve God. They seem to have accomplish little outside of distracting from legitimate missionary work being done across Chattanooga Street at The Care Mission.

Four or five years ago owners of every building on the Mars Theater block renovated their exteriors using matching funds from LaFayette’s Downtown Development Authority. Sidewalks were rebuilt by the city, new paint and awnings improved the block’s appearance, and Corner Pawn expanded. Despite the investment, surrounding storefronts never housed businesses for more than a few weeks at a time. Upstairs apartments were upgraded and rented out again at the same time, but those never seemed to stay filled either.

Only one of the three apartments was occupied last Monday, when someone turned over a candle and set a bed on fire. An eighty year old building with pine floors and tarpaper roof doesn’t take long to turn into a spectacular fire, and by the time fire trucks arrived there wasn’t much that could be done except keep flames from spreading to the adjoining structures. Several LaFayette firefighters went inside to extinguish the blaze but were quickly pulled out as the structure became unsafe.

Fire crews and firewalls kept buildings on both sides of the Mars from sustaining catastrophic damage, and Corner Pawn Shop hardly suffered a scratch in the conflagration, but the Mars Theater itself was certainly a complete loss. Everything on the second floor burned, including the roof, and much of the lower level melted in the heat, water, and subsequent rain.

What was once a center of the community, a place where the mill workers of Linwood and LaFayette went to relax, socialize, and be entertained before the advent of television, a place where LaFayette’s working-class citizens shopped until outside competition closed it down, is now an empty shell filled with wet rubble and broken glass. And that’s not likely to change; with little hope of ever making a profit on the site, owners will likely pocket any insurance money they receive and leave behind charred walls or an empty lot.

What remains of Mars Theater is visible down Villanow Street from the square. Memories of the fire are now fresh in peoples’ minds, but few remember what the building ever housed in the past. In weeks thoughts of the fire and loss will fade, and the Mars will become just another burned out shell, another empty structure, in a community full of them.

PHOTOS: Channel 3, LU Contributors.

We searched high and low for photos of Mars Theater in its glory days, but had no success. We’d like to make the Friday Photo a regular weekly or bi-weekly feature of the site, but in order to do that we need your help in getting historical local photos not available elsewhere. If you have a photo of the old Mars Theater, Mars Glove Mill, The Depot, or anything else interesting from LaFayette’s past (or present) please e-mail it to photo@cityoflafayettega.com.

NEXT WEEK: Asphalt

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  1. I had no idea it was a theater. That’s interesting. Thanks for the story, LU.

  2. Had no idea that it was a theater, I’m orginally from Ohio, and wonder why our local library doesn’t have more info our photos of this town from incorporation to present day. I think citizens should go thru their photo albums and make copies for library….. Would be nice to see more interest put back into what this town was like thru the years. As the senior citizens pass away we are losing many our ancestors who remember what the town looked like in years past.

  3. The library has a small collection of material, locally published books and church logs in the Georgia room. The G–t family has material displayed in their bank, and the Henrys have some old photos and archives too. But the biggest collection of historical material in the county is the Walker County Messenger’s archives, and they’re rotting away in an abandoned building. That’s the real prize but nobody cares about it.

    — LU

  4. My dad and some cronies slipped a mason jar full of yellow jacket wasps into the Mars Theatre many moons ago. While the movie played, they opened the jar, set it under the seats and hurried outside to watch the frantic crowd emerge stripping off shirts and hats.

    My dad … boy I miss him!

  5. Wild guess. They cracked the lid up on the balconey. That’s O.K. they used to sit up there and throw ice at us all the time. But hell, we all got along when the day was done. Just like Mayberry RFD…………

    Sadly, that era is gone. Everywhere, never to be seen again…………

  6. went there a few times myself Gabby.use to walk from Duke st. to get there.yep,a sad but true bygone era .why isn’t there a theatre now in LaFayette? council would probably say it would just be a waste of money,we have a golf course,what else do you need??

  7. what is wrong with people in this town to let a nonprofit cooperation who is over the sr center in lafayette ga to allow other sr,s to bullie and harrase other sr,s at the senior center all my rights were denied me an my family pays a lot of proptery taxes which pays for the up keep of the building gosh do i have some info on the people who work in the system

  8. It is peculiar that such a small town has had so many structural fires. Some deliberate, some accidental. I am looking for information on the destruction by fire, of Lafayette Jr. High and Lafayette First Assembly of God. I am interested in knowing if these two fires were ruled as accidental or if an investigation was performed. These two structures were destroyed in the late 1960s and/or early 1970s.

  9. We know the LaFayette Junior High fire (the old Hill High School) was burned in 1969? and deemed an intentional blaze. Most who think anything about it think it was set on purpose by the parent of a white child put out by their baby attending a black school.

    I’ve never heard of the Assembly of God fire.

    That period of time is unfortunately not in the scanned / indexed microfilm scans of the Messenger from that era, otherwise it would be easy to look up what happened at the time just by going to the library and sitting at a computer. Those archives end in the mid-60’s and there’s a black hole of information until Google scans of the old papers start in 1988.

    The actual physical papers and microfilms of them are at the library but you’d need to know what date (at least what month) the fires occurred to find anything looking through those one by one.

    — LU

  10. It’s so sad to read about how long this building had been abandoned. I just wanted to put my two cents in and say it’s not a shell any more-
    I’m part of the theatre company that is renovating the place into a black box theatre and putting on shows now! We’ve got a big lineup for this year, and the Mars is looking really nice with the facelift we have given it. I just thought it might lift some spirits to know this historic building is serving the arts once more.