Visit
Located at 223 W State St. in Black Mountain, we are open only by appointment over the winter. We will reopen daily mid-April 2019.
We’ll reopen on Saturday, April 13, 2019 with a brand-new exhibition on Beacon Manufacturing Company in Swannanoa.
Screened at the Lyric Theater on October 25 and 26, 1938
The Swannanoa footage features the Beacon Mill, businesses on Whitson Ave, and school children outside the old Swannanoa school. Studio photographer Herbert Lee Waters supplemented his income from 1936 to 1942 by traveling across North Carolina and parts of Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina to film the people of small communities. He collaborated with local movie theaters to screen his films, which he called Movies of Local People. As a filmmaker, Waters produced 252 films across 118 communities.