The Lyric Theater opened in 1914 as a vaudeville theater with 1,583 seats located in orchestra, mezzanine and upper balcony levels. It was a segregated theater where African-Americans would sit separately in the upper balcony, which had its own entrance. There were six opera boxes on each side of the proscenium, which were removed when the theater was equipped for CinemaScope in 1954. The Lyric Theater was closed as a regular movie theater in March 1960. It reopened on April 19, 1973 as the Grand Bijou Theater. It went over to adult movies first as the Foxy Adult Cinema, and later as the Roxy Adult Cinema which closed in the early-1980’s. The building lay empty and unused and in 1993, the owners sold it for $10 to Birmingham Landmarks. In 1998 plans were being formed to reopen the Lyric Theater, but very little happened and the building began to deteriorate. In March 2014, plans were approved for an $8 million renovation to be carried out. The opera boxes have been re-instated, and the mural restored by Evergreene Architectural Arts, who worked on most of the internal restoration. The Lyric Theater re-opened in 2016 as a live music and concert venue. Seating has been reduced to 750 as the upper balcony is not in use.
Also seen
HERE at Virtual Globetrotting.
Theatres - Misc, Entertainment - Concert 
