Historic Fort Worth
The board of Mercy Clinic said on Wednesday that it was moving ahead with plans to demolish the Berry Theater after what it termed “exhaustive efforts and numerous conversations with community leaders and stakeholders.”
“The board of Mercy Clinic has voted to demolish the building that formerly held the Berry Street theater to make way for an expanded free clinic to serve more people in the South Fort Worth community with free medical, dental, and spiritual care,” the board said in a statement.
“Mercy Clinic has been a part of the health of this community for a decade. A new clinic facility will show this community many more decades of Mercy.”
Permits had already been filed to raze the Berry Theater, which has sat at 3303 Hemphill since opening in 1940 but has been in steady decline for more than 50 years.
Mercy Clinic announced the acquisition of the theater property in the fall of 2021, adding at the time that the acquisition was part of a vision to build a “state-of-the-art” medical and dental clinic on the lot adjacent to the theater.
Mercy Clinic, which opened in 2013, serves patients in the underserved zip codes of 76110 and 76104 with free medical, dental, and spiritual care. 76104 is one of the zip codes identified as having the lowest life expectancy in the state of Texas.
The clinic’s mission “is to show Christ’s love and compassion by providing free medical, dental, and spiritual care.”
Ninety-five percent of its patients speak Spanish, and many are not citizens, according to the clinic, and have no other health care options.
In 2020, plans for a new building adjacent to the theater that would house 10 patient care rooms and six dental chairs were created. In 2021, a donor gifted the theater. At that time, clinic officials indicated that the theater would be the site for community ministries to those in need for the population at large, not merely those in its area of service.
“Unfortunately, recommendations by qualified architects deemed the building unsuitable for occupancy,” the board said in its statement. “The building has not been taken care of and is too costly to renovate. Even potential federal grants for historic preservation would not bring this cost down enough to not pull funding from the Mercy Clinic mission.”
Fort Worth City Council member Jeanette Martinez, who represents the area, told the Fort Worth Report, that she preferred to save the theater but that she has “faith that they also took any and all options into consideration before making this decision.”
The movie house is a relic of a bygone era.
The Berry Theater was originally named the White Theater, so called for the name of its owners. It became the Berry Theater in the early 1960s.
The theater was built during a time when suburban, neighborhood theaters were a thing. The most famous of these probably was the Texas Theater, which Lee Harvey Oswald ducked into in 1963.
In Fort Worth, the first of its kind was the New Tivoli on Magnolia. Fort Worth historian Richard Selcer wrote in the Star-Telegram that New Tivoli’s success led to construction of others, including the White Theater; the Rosen in Lake Worth in 1941; the Bowie on Camp Bowie and the Tower at Six Points in 1942. The New Isis, which is enjoying a resurgence after renovation, made its debut on North Main in 1944.
At the time of its construction, the Berry had 682 seats and was the anchor of a commercial strip at West Berry and Hemphill streets. The theater had a balcony, and, according to a description by Fort Worth Architecture, “the first-floor exterior was covered with burgundy-colored ceramic tile and a free-standing box office. The upper two floors along the front of the building were painted stucco with neon outlining and highlighting the architectural details on the facade.”
It was a three-story front sloping to a two-story stage house.
“It was a true neighborhood theater with little parking — many walked,” remembered Doug Sutherland, who grew up in the neighborhood in the 1940s and 1950s. “Our family of four would walk in evenings every month or so to see whatever was showing for the A/C and stop at Modern Drugs on the northeast corner Berry and Hemphill for Coke or banana split.”
The neighborhood theaters specialized in B-movies and second-run features, such as “King’s Row,” starring Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan, and Robert Cummings. The movie is set in a small American town called King's Row and follows the lives of several residents, focusing on the personal struggles and relationships within the community.
The rise of television, suburbanization, and the growth of multiplex cinemas led to the decline of many neighborhood theaters in Texas from the 1960s onward, not to mention, specifically here, many more things competing for the entertainment dollar.
By the early 1960s, the theater was showing almost exclusively Spanish-language films. By the 1970s, it was evident that the building had fallen into disrepair. It’s been vacant for years and years.
Preservationists received some hope in 2019 by the City Council’s action to authorize a tax incentive for the building’s rehabilitation. It coincided with Berry Theater LLC’s plans to spend $1.8 million in rehabilitating the old theater for use as an event center.
Not quite two years later, the property was transferred and a new purpose for mankind put in place.