{"id":1376,"slug":"strand-theatre-shreveport-louisiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Strand Theatre is the Saenger flagship — the 1925 'Million-Dollar Theatre' that opened with The Chocolate Soldier, the first of the 320-theater Saenger chain that spread across the South. The pharmacists who built it sold the chain to Paramount for $10 million four years later.","The theater was the dream — the 2,500-seat opera house the Saenger brothers built from their drugstore, the 939-pipe Robert Morton organ, the air conditioning that was a marvel in 1925. Vaudeville died under it; the movies took over; the prologues kept the stage alive.","The theater is still there — the State Theatre of Louisiana, the 1984 restoration that reopened it to standing room, the 'palace of dreams' that anchors the arts district. The file keeps the flagship: the 1925 opening, the Saenger chain's birthplace, and the theater that's the South's survivor.","The Strand is the archive's Shreveport file — the Million-Dollar Theatre, the Saenger flagship, and the movie palace that outlived the chain."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Strand is the archive's Shreveport file — the Saenger flagship, the 1925 palace, and the theater that's the official state stage.","A theater that started a chain keeps its organ — the file's suggestion being that the Strand's hold is the flagship: the first of 320, the Robert Morton pipes, and the palace that outlived Paramount."]}],"name":"Strand Theatre","aliases":[],"type":"THEATER","type_label":"Theater","cats":["HAUNTED_PLACE"],"groups":["hauntings","institutions"],"desc":"Theater in Shreveport; research record.","full_desc":"Strand Theatre is a theater in Shreveport, Louisiana, opened in 1925. Theater in Shreveport; research record. HauntHunt files it with haunted places. Ask the file who haunts it and it answers: Jim Montgomery. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 documented fact and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.","address":"619 Louisiana Avenue","city":"Shreveport","county":null,"state":"Louisiana","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":32.466879,"lon":-93.792193,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":1925,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Register of Historic Places","current_use":null,"research_notes":"Covid-era closure in the 2020 article is not treated as current status.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":53.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":619,"type":"OBJECTS_MOVING","description":"The tourism article reports director Jenifer Hill’s account of a repeatedly falling Jim Montgomery portrait. The reports concentrate at Founder’s Room. The theatre's reports favor the booth, the balcony, and the stage — the building's own logic of where a ghost would linger. It's a reported experience — real to the people who had it, unresolved for everyone else. The report is preserved in sources like 'Does Downtown Shreveport Have a New Haunting? '. Nothing here would make headlines alone; together the reports make a pattern.","evidence":"REPORTED_EXPERIENCE","evidence_label":"Reported experience","entity":"Jim Montgomery","where":"Founder’s Room","first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.65,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Does Downtown Shreveport Have a New Haunting?","url":"https://www.visitshreveportbossier.org/blog/post/does-downtown-shreveport-have-a-new-haunting/","publisher":"Visit Shreveport-Bossier","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The theater opened in 1925, according to the tourism article. The theatre's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It enters the file through media reporting — documented coverage, not folklore. Sources including 'Does Downtown Shreveport Have a New Haunting?' carry the record. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Does Downtown Shreveport Have a New Haunting?","url":"https://www.visitshreveportbossier.org/blog/post/does-downtown-shreveport-have-a-new-haunting/","publisher":"Visit Shreveport-Bossier","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"legends":[],"entities":[{"name":"Jim Montgomery","claimed_identity":"Jim Montgomery","verified":null,"summary":"The tourism article reports director Jenifer Hill’s account of a repeatedly falling Jim Montgomery portrait. The reports concentrate at Founder’s Room. An old theatre in Shreveport, Louisiana keeps its dead in the dark between shows — the reports just turn the house lights up. The report is preserved in sources like 'Does Downtown Shreveport Have a New Haunting?'. The name travels further than the proof; the sightings keep renewing the lease.","behavior":"The tourism article reports director Jenifer Hill’s account of a repeatedly falling Jim Montgomery portrait.","area":"Founder’s Room","first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Does Downtown Shreveport Have a New Haunting?","url":"https://www.visitshreveportbossier.org/blog/post/does-downtown-shreveport-have-a-new-haunting/","publisher":"Visit Shreveport-Bossier","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Does Downtown Shreveport Have a New Haunting?","url":"https://www.visitshreveportbossier.org/blog/post/does-downtown-shreveport-have-a-new-haunting/","publisher":"Visit Shreveport-Bossier","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Strand Theatre (Shreveport, Louisiana)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_Theatre_(Shreveport%2C_Louisiana)","desc":"United States historic place","extract":"The Strand Theatre in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, opened in 1925 as a Vaudeville venue and was nicknamed \"The greatest theatre of the South\" and the \"Million Dollar Theatre\" by its builders, Julian and Abraham Saenger of Shreveport, owners of the Saenger Amusements Company, which operated theaters throughout the American South and in Central America. By the 1940s it had evolved into a movie cinema, which it remained until its closure in 1977. Threatened with demolition, it was saved by a coalition of concerned citizens who restored it to its original grandeur over a nearly seven-year period. It is the \"Official State Theatre of Louisiana\". Since its re-opening in 1984 following res","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Strand_Theater_--Louisiana_Street_side_IMG_1587.JPG/330px-Strand_Theater_--Louisiana_Street_side_IMG_1587.JPG?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":90,"lat":32.51022,"lon":-93.74992},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":1,"sources":1}}