One of forty theaters in the South owned by Savannah-born theater developer Arthur Lucas (who partnered here with Paramount Pictures) and the only one bearing his name, the Lucas accommodated both silent films and Keith Circuit vaudeville. Richmond architect Howell used Spanish Baroque Revival for the exterior and designed an equally lavish Adamesque interior. The unusual broad and shallow proportions of the interior provide a striking sense of intimacy. As of 1924 the theater’s German-made air conditioner was “the first of its kind below the Mason-Dixon Line,” according to a 1981 article in the Savannah Morning News. Racial segregation forced African Americans to enter through a side exterior stairway and sit in the upper balcony. The theater closed in 1976 and later saved from demolition in 1986 by a nonprofit organization, the Lucas Theatre for the Arts, which undertook a $13 million restoration. It reopened in 2000, but without its original Wurlitzer pipe organ (reputed to be in storage in Atlanta).