Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:11:00

The ceiling is ancient Egypt by way of 1928 Columbus: a jazz-age Egyptian Revival fantasy built as a movie-and-vaudeville palace for the city's Black community, reborn as the King-Lincoln district's cultural anchor. The Lincoln Theatre, at 769 East Long Street, opened on 26 November 1928 and returned to life in 2009 after a 13.5-million-dollar restoration. The theatre was built by Al Jackson as the Ogden Theatre and Ballroom, part of a thriving Long Street corridor that made the near east side the heart of Black Columbus - its stage and second-floor ballroom hosting the touring royalty of jazz and swing. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Miles Davis and Etta James all played the building, and a Columbus teenager named Nancy Wilson sang early dates here. Decline followed the neighbourhood's: renamed the Lincoln in 1939, the theatre closed in the 1970s as highway construction and disinvestment hollowed the district, then sat dark for three decades - saved from demolition by its 1992 National Register listing and a coalition of city, county and private funders who rebuilt it seat by seat. The 2009 reopening restored the Egyptian Revival auditorium - 566 seats, lotus-motif plasterwork, that painted ceiling - and added what the original never had: a full modern stagehouse, the Jazz Academy education studios upstairs, and management by CAPA, the nonprofit that runs Columbus's historic theatre fleet. The programming honours the lineage while refusing museum status: jazz series and gospel brunches share the calendar with hip-hop, comedy, dance companies, community theatre and the Lincoln Theatre Association's education showcases - the building functioning as both a working venue and the cultural memory bank of the King-Lincoln Bronzeville neighbourhood. Practical notes: the theatre sits a short drive or bus ride east of downtown with free evening parking nearby; the house is intimate enough that every seat works, the ballroom's history is worth the pre-show wander if the doors are open, and the annual Lincoln anniversary and jazz-legacy nights are the signature tickets.