Charles C. Lincoln Sr., Marion's wealthiest citizen, was entranced by a theater he saw on a trip to Atlantic City. He hired that theater's designers, Novelty Scenic Studios of New York City, to design his theater's interior. Eubank and Caldwell designed and contracted for the building. The interior is the only known elaborate Art Deco Mayan decoration in Virginia. Mayan designs are stenciled and appliqued on the theater's walls, proscenium arch, columns, and ceilings, and the side walls have six large paintings of scenes in American and local history painted by local artist Lola Poston. Entrance to the theater is along an arcade that runs through the center of the U-shaped Royal Oak Apartment House commissioned by Charles Wassum in 1928. The four-story brick apartment building echoes the theater in its massing and first-floor store-fronts, but differs in the arrangement of windows and its triangular parapets.