906 Main Street has been our home in North Wilkesboro for over fifty years. But it was not always a law office. In fact, our building has a very long, interesting history as a movie theater.
Back in the early 1900’s it was home to the Amuzu, the town’s first cinema. It was later bought out and renamed The Strand, before being sold yet again and becoming the Allen Theater.
Of interest, there were apparently a few early theaters in North Carolina named “Amuzu” around the turn of the century. Along with our building in North Wilkesboro, there were Amuzu theaters in Elkin, Winston-Salem, and Southport, North Carolina around the same time. The historic Amuzu in Southport is still there.
The Amuzu in North Wilkesboro would have been home to the earliest silent films and perhaps traveling vaudeville shows as well. It’s fun to imagine the old building at one time screening early Charlie Chaplin’s and Buster Keaton’s to the accompaniment of live music provided by a local organist or string quartet.
The first “talkies” were most likely viewed and heard, to the amazement of their audience, in our building sometime in the late 1920’s as well.
The Allen Theater, along with the Orpheum (later to become the Liberty), were the two movie houses in North Wilkesboro for many years. Both theaters eventually burned, an unfortunate but all too common occurrence in the days of nitrate film.
The Orpheum burned in 1946 and was rebuilt as the Liberty Theater. It remains open to this day. The Allen burned in 1961, and thus ended our building’s decades-long run as a theater.
The Allen was gutted after the 1961 fire and later refurbished, over a course of years, into what would become our current office building. In the earliest days, the original law firm only occupied the rear of the building, with its entrance being at the back alley.
Law firms back then were discreet in this way, often preferring inconspicuous entrances with a simple shingle or glass door etching as the only indication of what it was. How different from the gaudy billboards and cheesy television ads of today!
As the law firm grew, it eventually came to span the entire building all the way to the current front on Main Street. During the periods of expansion, piles of blackened brick and a burnt rear wall were discovered in the recesses of the building – evidence of that long ago fire that marked the end of 906 Main Street’s origins as a theater.
Will McElwee has been a traffic attorney for over 25 years, and has established a solid track record helping folks from Boone and Wilkesboro to Winston Salem address traffic tickets. His family has a long and fruitful history in the area: the McElwee Law Firm began in 1932. Will’s grandfather, William H. McElwee, Jr., was a former president of the North Carolina Bar and sat on North Carolina’s Board of Law Examiners for many years.
As a “Double Deac,” Will attended Wake Forest University for both undergraduate and law school. He is a certified Superior Court and Family Financial Mediator and is also certified in the field of collaborative law.
