

A look inside the decaying adult theater, the Park, in Detroit.



Detroit’s Park Theater (also known as the “Lincoln Park Theater”) has had a rather long and diverse history. When it originally opened in 1925 in Lincoln City, Detroit, it was an elegant Art Deco style movie theater. In the late 1960s it was briefly converted into a live music venue where Lincoln Park natives the MC5 often played for next to nothing to large crowds. Sometime in the early 1980s, it became an adult movie theater that operated (much to the displeasure of many Lincoln Park residents) for nearly 30 years.

When the theater closed in 2008, the owners (who wanted to develop the building as a part of a multi-million-dollar strip club operation), donated the Park as part of a settlement agreement. The Park has since been converted into high-end lofts and retail space. However, before it was restored, the once opulent theater fell victim to decay and vandalism. The images that follow are perhaps not for the faint of heart, especially since the intrepid photographer used an infrared camera to pick up some of the “sticky mess” that was left behind after the Park closed its smutty doors. Hopefully he or she was up to date on their tetanus shot. That said, I still feel like it’s necessary to say that the photos you are about to see are NSFW.

If these walls could talk, eh? They’d be screaming “WASH ME!”



UPDATE: A kind commenter has corrected my error noting that this adult theater was not located in Detroit, but in Vancouver. Photo credit: Michael Mann





The once beautiful Park Theater back in its heyday, sometime in the late 1930s.





The projector room at the Park Theater.





















































