There’s a hill in the Clifton neighborhood in Louisville, a long slow climb up from Beargrass Creek in Butchertown – a fitting site for a splendid movie theater at the dawn of a new century. The Hilltop Theater, a two-story edifice clad in glazed white brick, with a dramatic recessed entrance, has delighted those making the trek up the hill for well over a century now. The one-screen movie theater, with 457 seats (according to one source), opened early in the 20th century, and continued showing movies through the 1950s.
Façade of the Hilltop Theater in Louisville, Kentucky. Photograph summer 2023.
There’s some debate on when the building was constructed – most local accounts say 1905. But there’s nary a mention of the Hilltop in the newspapers until 1915, when two workmen hanging a sign at the Hilltop fell 35 feet after a fire alarm went off at the adjacent Hook & Ladder Company No. 6.* The men, employees of the Imperial Wire & Iron Company, apparently contorted themselves a bit too much in order to watch the commotion at the fire station, and the rope holding the scaffolding in place snapped.
The Hilltop on the left, the former fire station on the right.
In the 1905 Louisville city directory, there are five theaters listed in the city: the Avenue Theater (544 4th Street); the Buckingham Theater (219-227 W. Jefferson Street); Hopkins Theater (133 West Market Street); McCauley’s Theater (339 W. Walnut); and the New Masonic Theater (310-314 W. Chestnut Street). Five years later, there were 25 theaters in Louisville, but the Hilltop doesn’t appear in the city directories until 1916. I think a construction date of 1915 for the building is safe enough.
A circa 1922 ad for the “Radio in Moving Pictures.”
In the mid-20th century, the Hilltop was not only a movie palace, but a neighborhood hangout. The “Top of the Hill Horde,” a group of boys and girls who grew up in Clifton, recalled buying popcorn for five cents at the theater, and watching movies all day long.**
A 1956 ad for Hillbilly Jamborees nite at the Hilltop Theater.
I couldn’t find an exact date the Hilltop Theater closed, but it was likely in the 1970s, when much of downtown Louisville decamped to the suburbs, and neighborhood businesses and haunts declined. For more than 40 years, the Hilltop was home to the Conti & Sons Novelty Shop.
Circa 1984 photograph of the Hilltop Theater. Image from the Clifton Historic District National Register of Historic Places nomination.
In 2015, the Hilltop was restored, and later converted to a restaurant and bar. It is now the office of a real estate firm, and a beautiful, shining gem in the Clifton neighborhood.
* “Two Hurt in 35-foot Fall as Scaffold Rope Breaks” The Courier-Journal, Thursday, February 11, 1915, page 10, column 1.
** Martha Elson, “Painter’s Scenes evoke memories of Hilltop Theater.” The Courier Journal, May 2, 2001.
