The Strand: A Million-Dollar Theatre Saved
Near Shreveport, Louisiana
When Julian and Abraham Saenger commissioned a new theatre for downtown Shreveport in nineteen twenty-five, they were explicit about what they wanted. They called it the Million Dollar Theatre. Architect Emile Weil delivered an eclectic showpiece: ornate plasterwork, a grand lobby, a stage large enough for vaudeville productions, and a name that the Saenger brothers immediately confirmed, The Greatest Theatre of the South.
It opened as a vaudeville house in an era when vaudeville was already being displaced by something newer. By the nineteen forties the Strand had transitioned to cinema, running films until it closed in nineteen seventy-seven. At that point, with renovation unlikely and demolition the easier path, community advocates organized.
They spent seven years raising money and restoring the building to something close to its original condition. It reopened in nineteen eighty-four as a performing arts venue. The state of Louisiana recognized what the community had done and designated the Strand the Official State Theatre of Louisiana.
The National Register of Historic Places had already added it in May of nineteen seventy-seven, the same year it closed. The timing was not lost on anyone: the building was recognized as historically significant the very moment it seemed most at risk. Today the Strand hosts the Shreveport Broadway Series and traveling productions, functioning as the downtown cultural anchor that its founders imagined a century ago.
The plasterwork is still there, and so is the stage, and the name on the marquee still reads exactly what the Saenger brothers paid for.
