The opening of the Carver Theater was advertised in the Tampa Sunday Tribune on June 1, 1947, stating, “New Colored Theater Coming In August.” Named after George Washington Carver and located on North Boulevard in West Tampa where Main Street dead ends. It was built as a segregated theater, a common practice in the 1940s as a result of Jim Crow laws. Movies featured when this photograph was taken in 1958 were The Sound and the Fury with Yul Brenner and Hong Kong Confidential. The coming attraction was Anna Lucasta with Eartha Kitt and Sammy Davis Jr.

The lot where the theater once stood now sits adjacent to I-275, which intersects North Boulevard. Details on the demise of the building are somewhat sketchy, but newspaper articles indicate that it was most likely demolished between 1964 and 1965. A report in the 1966 Tampa Times indicates that the property owners, Continental Enterprises, were paid $37,500 as part of an Urban Renewal Agency condemnation lawsuit. Urban renewal is a process by which a municipality acquires property through condemnation and then sells or re-develops it. The controversial Tampa Urban Renewal Agency operated with few objections from citizens and was designed to “remove slum dwellings and blight caused by some dwellings”.

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