A two-story red-brick theater on a corner. Across the second floor runs a row of multi-pane windows, each set in a raised brick frame. Below them a marquee projects over the sidewalk, with a white changeable-letter board in the middle and, at each end, a maroon panel spelling HI-POINTE in cream letters traced in neon tubing. Steel rods tie it back to the wall, and its underside is studded with light sockets. Under the marquee, a freestanding stainless-steel ticket booth with teal curtains stands between pairs of glass doors, and steel-framed poster cases marked NOW and SOON flank the entrance. A steel billboard frame rises above the roof, and a painted navy sign on a side wall reads The Hi-Pointe Theatre, Since 1922.
The Hi-Pointe Theatre opened in 1922, a single-screen neighborhood movie house designed by the architects August Foell and William Schlesinger. It joined the St. Louis Amusement Company chain in 1926 and was later run by Arthur Enterprises. The James family bought the theater in 1977 and operated it for some four and a half decades across three generations. In 2015 the building was renovated — the brick facade restored and the auditorium and concessions rehabbed — and a second screen, the 48-seat Hi-Pointe Backlot, opened in an adjacent building. In 2023 the nonprofit Cinema St. Louis acquired the theater, which continues to run first-run and independent films.
