On your right, look for the pale blue and white storefront with the bright Art Deco “DeSoto” marquee and a classic cinema signboard hanging over the sidewalk.
This is the DeSoto Theatre, downtown Rome’s old-school showstopper... the kind of place built to make everyday folks feel like royalty for the price of a ticket. Back in the early 1900s, a local entertainment man named O. C. Lam decided Rome deserved a real “movie palace,” not just a room with a screen. He bought prime main-street property for about $37,000 at the time... roughly around $700,000 today... and aimed high, taking inspiration from the big, glamorous theaters up north.
When the DeSoto opened in August 1927, it cost about $110,000 to build... something like $2 million today... and it seated around 1,500 people. That’s not a neighborhood screening, that’s an event. And it wasn’t just fancy, it was futuristic: it was built specifically for sound films, making it the first theater in the Southeast designed for “talkies,” complete with a Vitaphone system. Add early heating and cooling tech, and enough exits to clear the place in two minutes... because nothing kills the mood like a fire hazard.
The building even carries older layers: before this theater, the site housed Rome’s Freedmen’s Bureau office. Then came thirty-ish years where this marquee basically served as Northwest Georgia’s living room.
When it closed as a movie house in 1982, it didn’t stay quiet for long. The Rome Little Theatre moved in, and today a nonprofit foundation keeps it going, still showing off that mirrored entrance, Georgian-style interior, and that stubbornly charming marquee... while working to restore more.
When you’re set, Sara Hightower Regional Library System is a 5-minute walk heading northeast.
