Princess Theatre

On Second Avenue in the heart of downtown Decatur, Alabama, the Princess Theatre has been the anchor of the city’s performing arts scene for more than a century. Its neon marquee, visible from blocks away, marks one of the few surviving Art Deco theaters in the state, and the building’s story stretches back well before it ever showed a film or hosted a concert.

The site began in 1887 as a livery stable, an odd starting point for what would become a performance venue. It was converted into a theater and reopened on December 30, 1919, as a silent film and vaudeville playhouse, booking Keith Vaudeville acts and traveling “high class roadshows” of the era. The building’s current look dates to a 1941 renovation, when architect Albert Frahn gave the interior its Art Deco identity: burgundy and gray murals designed to glow under blacklight, fluorescent carpeting in the aisles, and a lobby floor laid in terrazzo with an outline of the state of Alabama. That renovation, along with the exterior neon marquee, is what earned the building its listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The theater has been reshaped several more times since then. In 1978, the City of Decatur invested $750,000 to convert it into a formal performing arts center with 677 seats. A $6 million master plan restoration between 2000 and 2001 repaired the facade, expanded the lobby, and rebuilt the stage facilities, and further updates to the Sexton Lobby and a coffee bar followed between 2003 and 2016. In 2017, the theater added digital cinema projection and Dolby Surround sound, letting it alternate between film screenings and live performances without missing a beat.

Today the Princess Theatre operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Princess Theatre Center for the Performing Arts, independent of any chain or touring promoter. Its calendar runs heavy on bluegrass, country, and Americana artists, alongside film screenings, educational programs for area schoolchildren, and community collaborations. Past seasons have brought in songwriters and touring musicians whose work leans acoustic and roots-oriented, a booking style that has made the Princess something of a listening room as much as a concert hall, with an audience that comes as much for the room’s acoustics and history as for any single act.

Beyond ticketed shows, the theater rents its space for private events and community functions, giving it a second life as a gathering spot for weddings, meetings, and local organizations that want a historic backdrop. A small merchandise counter sells theater-branded apparel and gifts, and the box office keeps its own set of hours, Tuesday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., separate from performance nights. Because the organization runs as a nonprofit, it also fundraises to support its programming and preservation work, a reminder that keeping a building this old running as a working theater, rather than a museum piece, takes ongoing effort from the community around it.

Ticket prices vary by event rather than following a fixed pattern, since the theater books everything from national touring acts to smaller local showcases, so it is worth checking the specific show before planning a visit. Past ticket prices for a single national touring artist have run in the $40 to $45 range, though prices for local or community programming tend to run lower, and film screenings are typically priced well below concert tickets. Doors and box office windows on show nights operate separately from the Tuesday through Thursday administrative hours, so patrons buying tickets at the door should plan to arrive close to showtime rather than during the week.

What stays constant is the setting: a downtown Decatur landmark within easy walking distance of the Cook Museum, the Carnegie Visual Arts Center, and the shops and restaurants along Bank Street and Second Avenue, making it a natural stop for anyone spending an evening in the historic district. Visitors who want to understand the building’s Art Deco details, the terrazzo Alabama map in the lobby floor, the aisle carpeting, the restored marquee, are best served by arriving a little early, since the architecture itself is as much a draw as whatever is on stage that night. For a city on the Tennessee River that could easily have let a 19th-century livery-stable-turned-theater fall into disrepair, the fact that the Princess is still hosting shows more than a hundred years after it first opened its doors says a good deal about how the community has chosen to hold onto it.