Community Theatre opened in 1929 at 20 South Washington Street. Designed by architects J. Frederick Krokyn and W. Chester Browne, the theater cost roughly $300,000 to build. Its auditorium seated close to 1,500 people, making it one of the largest gathering places in town. There was no balcony. Instead, the seats rose along a sloped floor to give the audience a clear view of the stage.
The interior was considerably more elaborate than the building that replaced it. The theater had an 80-foot-wide foyer, red carpeting, gold detailing, chandeliers, and a Wurlitzer pipe organ. Opening-week films included The Wolf of Wall Street with George Bancroft and Lucky Boy with George Jessel. The stage was also used for live performances and town meetings.
By the 1950s, television was cutting into movie attendance. In 1951, Alfred Hitchcock visited the Community Theatre as part of Movietime USA, a film-industry campaign intended to get people back into theaters. The Community stopped operating as a full-time movie house in 1956, although movies continued there occasionally into the early 1970s. There were several attempts to bring the building back, including classic-film screenings and concerts by acts such as the Kinks and Seals & Crofts. Portions of the auditorium were eventually converted into office space.
The Community Theatre was demolished in 1982, and a North Attleborough Housing Authority complex was constructed on the site the following year. One substantial piece survived. The theater’s granite cornerstone, dated 1928, was saved by the Housing Authority. In 2026, plans were announced to move it to the Falls Fire Barn Museum. More than forty years after the theater disappeared, at least something besides photographs is still around to mark where it stood.
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