A two-story corner building of buff brick, the theater entrance set mid-block up a short flight of steps beneath a bracketed marquee flanked by paired columns and poster cases, with shopfronts to either side. Paired and tripartite second-story windows carry brick and terra-cotta trim and diamond insets beneath a bracketed cornice. A tall vertical blade sign lettered "SHAW," edged in bulbs, rises from the corner of Shaw Boulevard and South 39th Street above the roofline.
The Shaw Theatre opened in 1915 at 3903 Shaw Boulevard, a purpose-built neighborhood movie house designed by Kennerly & Steigemeyer and seating about 1,140. It was run over the years by the Fanchon & Marco chain (Arthur Enterprises) and the St. Louis Amusement Company. The theater closed on July 5, 1956, reopened briefly in May 1957 for German-language films, and shut for good in March 1960. The building then served as a drug store and a supermarket before a 2018 restoration reopened it as the Wild Carrot, a wedding and events venue that kept the Shaw marquee.
