Published: July 28, 2008 04:28 pm            

Inside the Magic

Former downtown theater turned into office and apartment space

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

From the outside, Barbourville’s Magic Theater showcases all its original art deco charm, but inside it’s been given a new use — renovated as modern home and office space that still has a touch of history.

When it opened (in the late 1930s, early 1940s), the Magic Theater was so named because it had “magic eye” automatically opening doors — a pretty rare feat in those days.

“We may have had dirt roads, but we had a kick-butt theater,” said one of the Magic’s current owners, Gary Campbell.

Campbell said he believed the more than 500-seat theater burned sometime in the 1940s-1950s, but the shell of the building remained. It was renovated to house a restaurant downstairs and the locally-famous Jack’s Blue Room dance hall upstairs.

Today, the downstairs hardly resembles a theater —  with the exception of the original terrazzo floors and small holes where the rows of seats were once bolted down. For the past 11 years, downstairs has been home to Gary Campbell Insurance.

When the option became available, in March, Campbell purchased the building with his wife and brother-in-law Jerry Gray.

His mother now has one of the best views of downtown Barbourville from her apartment in the Magic’s second floor, which overlooks the courthouse square. It showcases the Magic’s circular glass block window in her living room — which was the corner where the live band used to play at the Blue Room on Saturday nights. Previous owners converted the space to include three other apartments, but all the apartments share the original dance floor.

Residents got the chance to view the Magic Theater apartments and other “undiscovered treasures” of downtown living and office space during a tour hosted by Barbourville’s Main Street program Thursday.

In addition to the Magic, the self-guided tour —  printed on a treasure map — also included the house that once belonged to former lieutenant governor Kenneth Tuggle and the former house of the Dishman family, who founded the Barbourville Street Car Line in 1890.

        

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