A Google search shows a Brooks Pharmacy at that address. It’s probably in its own new building rather than the old theatre building, but I won’t know for sure until I take a trip out there.
Looking back through the Boston Globe archives, it appears that the theater reopened in March 1979 as a live stage, but then closed again for good in May 1981. During those two years, it presented jazz concerts, musical events, mime, dance, and a couple of plays including “American Buffalo”.
I’ve been looking through the online Boston Globe and Herald archives for more information on this theatre. It was a venue for big band music in the 1940s and 50s. From an August 7, 1988 Globe article:
“The old RKO-Boston Theater on Washington Street near the Combat Zone has long since been closed, with few reminders that during the 1940s and into the early 1950s, it was the showcase for the nation’s favorite bands and vocal groups. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glen Gray, Charlie Spivak, Bob Chester, the Ink Spots, the Andrews Sisters, the Mills Brothers — they all played the RKO.
The Glenn Miller band made its final Boston appearance there on Thursday, Sept. 17, 1942, ten days before the band broke up after its last performance at the Central Theater in Passaic, N.J. Miller then joined the Army Air Force."
From a May 8, 1983 Globe article:
“After the Rock Hudson bomb "Ice Station Zebra,” the Boston Cinerama Theater on lower Washington street closed, re-opened briefly as a twin cinema with black and Chinese films. Now, a portion of the theater called the Star Cinema shows Chinese films exclusively on a small screen."
(Ice Station Zebra was released in 1968.)
In the 1980s, the owner of the 600 Washington Street building considered turning the theater into a parking garage. Fortunately, this didn’t happen.
According to the Globe and Herald archives, the National closed in 1978 and was demolished in April-May 1997. A selection process to develop new smaller theatres on the site started almost immediately after the demolition.
The “Boston 200 Bicentennial Guidebook”, published in 1975, says that the National was built in 1911 as the largest vaudeville house in New England, and it once hosted stars like Gene Autry and Mae West.
The guidebook lists the Associated Artists Opera, New England Regional Opera, and the Boston Philharmonia Orchestra as then-current users of the National.
At the time of that publication, the National was supposedly being “restored as a 3000-seat theater for concerts, dance, and opera”, but this obviously did not happen.
From “Boston: A Guide Book” by Edwin M. Bacon, published by Ginn & Company, 1922:
Looking up Hamilton Place, opposite Park Street church, we see the side of the old Music Hall, now a theater. This is a building of pleasant memories. It was erected in 1852, projected chiefly by the Harvard Musical Association, then the representative of classical orchestral music in Boston. Nearly thirty years later (1881) the Boston Symphony Orchestral began its career here, under the generous patronage of Henry L. Higginson. Once the hall had in its “great organ” one of the largest and finest instruments in the world, but this was permitted to be sold and removed at a time when the hall was undergoing alterations. For some years, during the later part of his life, Music Hall was Theodore Parker’s pulpit; and at a later period that of W.H.H. Murray, after he had been a pastor of Park Street Church.
By the 1940’s costs were mounting and big name headliners became increasingly necessary to draw crowds. The Big Bands, including Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman, and Gene Krupa, played here. Bob Hope, Al Jolson, and Dorothy Lamour performed at war bond drives. After world War II attendance declined due to the impact of TV. Stage shows were abandoned for a while, but after the Boston Opera House was destroyed in the late 1950’s, the theatre became attractive to large touring productions. Rechristened the Music Hall in 1962, the theatre hosted such groups as the Bolshoi Ballet, the Boston Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera. However, stage depth and production facilities were inadequate, and many touring shows were forced to bypass the Boston audience.
In 1974 the Boston Redevelopment Authority identified the Music Hall as a theatre with potential to serve the city and suggested to the owners, the New England Medical Center Hospital, that a non-profit group by established to lease and renovate the facility. Metroplitan Center, Inc. was incorporated in 1976. In 1983 the roof was seriously damaged, and the theatre was about to be demolished. A plea went out to the community to save the theatre, and Dr. An Wang of computer fame answered the plea with a gift of $4,000,000. The theatre was renamed in his honor. The building is in the National Register of Historic Places.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
The Wang Center, originally the Metropolitan and built in 1925, combines a 14-story Renaissance Revival office building of granite and cast stone, with an auditorium seating 4225 people. C.H. Blackall was the architect. The interior is characterized by a series of vestibules and lobbies, highly decorated in marble, bronze, ornate gilding, and painted friezes.
The initial developer of the Metropolitan was Boston movie mogul Nathan Gordon. The cost was over $8,000,000. The theatre employed a corps de ballet, a 100-voice chorus, and a 55-piece orchestra. There was also a 3100-pipe organ. Along with the stage shows, the musicians and dancers presented tableaux, ballet, and operatic moments. Admission cost 35 to 75 cents. To amuse people waiting to be seated, there were musicians playing in the Grand Lobby, paintings by area artists hung on the walls, and ping pong and billiards downstairs. After the show, couples danced in the Grand Lounge, and in 1932 a small Art Deco restaurant called the Platinum Salon opened in the lounge area.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
[in 1907] the Unique Theatre, an early nickelodeon, opened at the corner of Washington and Kneeland Streets. It became the Stuart in 1925 and the X-rated Pussycat in 1976, before giving way to McDonald’s in the late 1980’s.
According to a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993, this opened as the Park Theatre in 1879. It says:
Lotta Crabtree, the famous actress who subsequently owned the theatre (which was constructed from Beethoven Hall), opened the Park with “La Cigale”. she was followed in later years by Booth, Mansfield, St. Denis, and Nazimova. The theatre was remodeled by Clarence Blackall in 1903 and assumed several other identities (inclding Minsky’s Park burlesque) before its demolition in 1991, at which time it was Boston’s oldest theatre.
As of yesterday the theatre was still standing, but I don’t think any legal impediments remain to prevent demolition. I’ll try to walk by every few days and report any activity.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
In 1909 Architect Clarence Blackall created this 1700-seat fireproof theatre out of steel and reinforced concrete. The curved first balcony seemed to be held up without visible support. Above it was a steep gallery. Twenty brass-railed boxes rose in three tiers at each side of the proscenium. The Gaiety is fronted by a six-story office building under which runs a long entry from Washington Street.
Preceding the Gaiety on the site were the Boylston Museum (1875-85), the World’s Museum (1887-90) and the Lyceum Theatre from 1893 to 1907. The Gaiety became the Publix movie theatre in 1950, which closed in the 1980s.
According to a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1996 this theatre was originally called “Gordon’s Olympia”. The booklet says:
Architect Clarence Blackall designed the Olympia Theatre in 1912 within an existing 1891 office building designed by Winslow and Wetherell. It had a vaulted, frescoed ceiling. There were four floors of offices over a shell-like theatre entrance with a stucco finish. Its auditorium was in the very rear of its block, preceded by a group of vestibules containing stairways, restrooms, and one of the first theatre escalators that ran through a former carpet store, which fronted on Washington Street. The theatre held 2500 people in an orchestra, two balconies, and fourteen brass-railed boxes. The Olympia offered vaudeville and films. In 1996, the theatre, considered the oldest in continual use in Boston, was slated for demolition.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
In is prime, the Paramount was an outstanding example of Art Deco theatre architecture, representing the first use of this style in a boston theatre. Typical was the inclusion of natural forms, such as shells, sunbursts, and flowers, which were stylized to appear more slender and elegant. Geometric motifs were also employed, the most common being the ziggurat. The theatre was designed by architect Arthur Bowditch. It was built in 1932 and exemplified a reordering of priorities taking place in theatres across the country. When sound films were introduced, they were able to attract audiences without the addition of a stage show. Consequently, the Paramount (seating 1500) was considerably smaller than most earlier Boston theatres. Acoustics were carefuly considered, to take advantage of the “talkies”. Unfortunately much of the interior detail was destroyed or damaged with the removal of asbestos some years ago. The Paramount is a Boston Landmark and is located within the Washington Street Theatre National Register Historic District.
The booklet also says this was the last new theatre building to be constructed in this part of Boston.
If you look up at the restored façade, you’ll see a Paramount Pictures logo on the left, and a Publix Theatres logo on the right.
It would be nice to replace the photo here with a newer one.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
Designed by Thomas Lamb, the Keith Memorial Theatre (later the Savoy and, most recently, the Opera House) was constructed in 1928 in the Mediterranen Baroque/Beaux-Arts tradition. The 26-foot-wide by 96-foot-high, high-relief façade on Washington Street is of glazed white terra cotta. The theatre extends 307 feet through the block to a rear entrance on Mason Street. The original bronze ticket booth, bronze poster display cases, and ceiling chandelier and wall sconces are intact. The sumptuous interior combines elements of the European Baroque and English “Adam” styles, with a color scheme of white, red, and gold.
The building has experiencd only minor alterations and is in relatively good condition throughout. The stair landing on the second floor is referred to as Memorial Hall because it was originally the location of the bust of B.F. Keith, theatre developer and impresario.
Dedicated to Benjamin Franklin Keith (1846-1914), the founder of vaudeville, the theatre was planned by his successors as a lavish tribute to his memory. During the 1890’s Keith established a chain of popularly priced theatres, which by his death numbered 400. He is baried in the Newton Centre Cemtery, his grave fittingly marked by an enormous Corinthian column.
The Keith Memorial was buit on the foundation of the 1854 Boston Theatre, a grand theatre/opera house with a seating capacity of 3140.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
In 1913 C.H. Blackall designed a long, narrow, 800-seat cinema which was inserted in the ground floor of the Dobson Building, a five-story Ruskinian Gothic, sandstone warehouse, designed by Levi Newcomb and Son in 1876. Blackall added an elegant but somewhat incongruous two-story, Florentine Renaissance, white marble façade to the building.
He was aided in the theatre design by acoustician Wallace Sabine, a Harvard professor who first applied scientific principles to the study of sound and space. It was Sabine and Blackall’s only collaboration.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
The ill-fated Plymouth Theatre, at 131 Stuart Street, opened in 1911. Designed by C.H. Blackall, it hosted many major openings including “The Man Who Came to Dinner” and the American premier of “Playboy of the Western World.” It became the Gary Cinema in 1958 and was demolished for the State Transportation Building in 1978.
The booklet also mentioned an abandoned system of pedestrian tunnels linking the Plymouth, the Majestic, the Colonial, and the Little Building to the Boylston subway station.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
An extravaganza of Beaux Arts detail inside and out, the Majestic Theatre was designed by John Galen Howard and J.M. Wood for merchant and music patron Eben D. Jordan Jr., son of the founder of Jordan Marsh and Company [department store]. It opened on February 16, 1903 with a musical fantasy called “The Storks”. The Majestic is the only known Boston work of Howard, who was MIT- and Beaux Arts-trained and went on to a distinguished career at the University of California in Berkeley. The gray terra cotta façade dominates Tremont Street, with its ornamentation cast in high relief.
Its small but highly decorated lobby, with murals by William de Leftwich Dodge, fine stained glass windows, mirrored walls, and a heavily gilded frieze in relief, leads to the auditorium with its series of arches proceeding from that of the proscenium, each one higher than the last, until reaching the gallery ceiling. It was the first theatre to integrate electrical fixtures into the architectural fabric and the first to be constructed without balcony support columns, thus ensuring an unobstructed view of the stage. Its distinctive curved shape, likened to the inside of a megaphone, accounts for its superior acoustics.
For half a century the Majestic featured such luminaries as Ethel Merman, Harry Houdini, Lena Horne, the Marx Brothers, and W.C. Fields. In 1956 it was sold to the Sack Cinema chain and converted into a movie house called the Saxon. It suffered from unfortunate alterations, neglect, and misuse. In 1983 Emerson College purchased the Majestic for its performing arts program and began a meticulous restoration. The Majestic is a Boston Landmark.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
This was the second theatre called “Globe” in Boston. Designed by Arthur Vinal, it opened in 1903. Its two-story, Romanesque entrance arch was cut into panels with centered light bulbs. The facing was light brick and terra cotta, topped with friezework, cornice, and balustrae. On the latter were eleven bronze posts topped with lamps. The Globe was famous for burlesque in the 1930’s with Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fannie Brice, Sophie Tucker, W.C. Fields, Abbott & Costello, and Gypsy Rose Lee among its performers.
By the way, I’m not convinced this theater was ever called “Century”. I think it should be listed here as “Center”, although in its final years as an Asian cinema it had the name “Pagoda”.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
The Tremont Theatre, designed by J.B. McElfatrick Sons, appeared on the site of the [former] Haymarket Theatre in 1889, using a three-story granite building, designed in 1869 by N.J. Bradlee, as an entrance. Sarah Bernhardt played in “La Tosca”, and “Birth of a Nation” opened in 1915. It was remodeled as the Astor Theatre in 1949 and demolished in 1983.
It its declining years of the 1970s, I believe it was called “Essex Theatre” or “Essex Cinema”. It definitely wasn’t called “Boston Cinerama” or “RKO Boston” anymore.
And when they moved the entrance around the corner onto Essex Street and began showing Asian films, I think it got yet another name, “Star Cinema”.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993, It says:
“In 1925 a theatre was installed in the rear of the [Washington-Essex] building, called the Keith Albee Boston, designed by Thomas Lamb, the country’s best known 20th century theatre architect. Its presentations of live entertainment continued through the 1940s. The theatre became Boston Cinerama from 1961 to 1966 and was subsequently subdivided and partially modernized. it is current vacant, following a short career as a Chinese theatre.”
Following up my earlier post regarding seeing the theatre from Essex Street:
You have to do this at night. If you try during the day, as I did a few hours ago, you won’t see much because of bright reflections off the glass doors.
I have no idea why the interior of the unused theatre appears to be lit at night.
When the Pilgrim closed, it was the last remaining X-rated movie house in Boston. All of the others had already been torn down, closed, or converted to non-theatre uses.
The State has been torn down – one of the Millennium/Ritz-Carlton towers is now on its site.
The Pilgrim has been torn down – a condominium tower called “Park Essex” is now under construction on its site.
The Center is now a large, fancy Chinese restaurant.
Where the Stuart entrance was, there’s now a McDonald’s. I don’t know if any remnant of the theatre sits behind it.
The Publix (originally Gaiety) could be torn down literally any day now, as courts are rejecting litigation to preserve it. I’m posting regular updates on that situation.
Demolished in February 1990, according to a Boston Globe article from March 18, 1990.
A Google search shows a Brooks Pharmacy at that address. It’s probably in its own new building rather than the old theatre building, but I won’t know for sure until I take a trip out there.
“Like some of the other Century bargain houses, the price was always the last two digits of the year.”
I assume that it closed some time before 2000?
Looking back through the Boston Globe archives, it appears that the theater reopened in March 1979 as a live stage, but then closed again for good in May 1981. During those two years, it presented jazz concerts, musical events, mime, dance, and a couple of plays including “American Buffalo”.
I’ve been looking through the online Boston Globe and Herald archives for more information on this theatre. It was a venue for big band music in the 1940s and 50s. From an August 7, 1988 Globe article:
“The old RKO-Boston Theater on Washington Street near the Combat Zone has long since been closed, with few reminders that during the 1940s and into the early 1950s, it was the showcase for the nation’s favorite bands and vocal groups. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glen Gray, Charlie Spivak, Bob Chester, the Ink Spots, the Andrews Sisters, the Mills Brothers — they all played the RKO.
The Glenn Miller band made its final Boston appearance there on Thursday, Sept. 17, 1942, ten days before the band broke up after its last performance at the Central Theater in Passaic, N.J. Miller then joined the Army Air Force."
From a May 8, 1983 Globe article:
“After the Rock Hudson bomb "Ice Station Zebra,” the Boston Cinerama Theater on lower Washington street closed, re-opened briefly as a twin cinema with black and Chinese films. Now, a portion of the theater called the Star Cinema shows Chinese films exclusively on a small screen."
(Ice Station Zebra was released in 1968.)
In the 1980s, the owner of the 600 Washington Street building considered turning the theater into a parking garage. Fortunately, this didn’t happen.
According to the Globe and Herald archives, the National closed in 1978 and was demolished in April-May 1997. A selection process to develop new smaller theatres on the site started almost immediately after the demolition.
The “Boston 200 Bicentennial Guidebook”, published in 1975, says that the National was built in 1911 as the largest vaudeville house in New England, and it once hosted stars like Gene Autry and Mae West.
The guidebook lists the Associated Artists Opera, New England Regional Opera, and the Boston Philharmonia Orchestra as then-current users of the National.
At the time of that publication, the National was supposedly being “restored as a 3000-seat theater for concerts, dance, and opera”, but this obviously did not happen.
From “Boston: A Guide Book” by Edwin M. Bacon, published by Ginn & Company, 1922:
Looking up Hamilton Place, opposite Park Street church, we see the side of the old Music Hall, now a theater. This is a building of pleasant memories. It was erected in 1852, projected chiefly by the Harvard Musical Association, then the representative of classical orchestral music in Boston. Nearly thirty years later (1881) the Boston Symphony Orchestral began its career here, under the generous patronage of Henry L. Higginson. Once the hall had in its “great organ” one of the largest and finest instruments in the world, but this was permitted to be sold and removed at a time when the hall was undergoing alterations. For some years, during the later part of his life, Music Hall was Theodore Parker’s pulpit; and at a later period that of W.H.H. Murray, after he had been a pastor of Park Street Church.
More from this booklet:
By the 1940’s costs were mounting and big name headliners became increasingly necessary to draw crowds. The Big Bands, including Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman, and Gene Krupa, played here. Bob Hope, Al Jolson, and Dorothy Lamour performed at war bond drives. After world War II attendance declined due to the impact of TV. Stage shows were abandoned for a while, but after the Boston Opera House was destroyed in the late 1950’s, the theatre became attractive to large touring productions. Rechristened the Music Hall in 1962, the theatre hosted such groups as the Bolshoi Ballet, the Boston Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera. However, stage depth and production facilities were inadequate, and many touring shows were forced to bypass the Boston audience.
In 1974 the Boston Redevelopment Authority identified the Music Hall as a theatre with potential to serve the city and suggested to the owners, the New England Medical Center Hospital, that a non-profit group by established to lease and renovate the facility. Metroplitan Center, Inc. was incorporated in 1976. In 1983 the roof was seriously damaged, and the theatre was about to be demolished. A plea went out to the community to save the theatre, and Dr. An Wang of computer fame answered the plea with a gift of $4,000,000. The theatre was renamed in his honor. The building is in the National Register of Historic Places.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
The Wang Center, originally the Metropolitan and built in 1925, combines a 14-story Renaissance Revival office building of granite and cast stone, with an auditorium seating 4225 people. C.H. Blackall was the architect. The interior is characterized by a series of vestibules and lobbies, highly decorated in marble, bronze, ornate gilding, and painted friezes.
The initial developer of the Metropolitan was Boston movie mogul Nathan Gordon. The cost was over $8,000,000. The theatre employed a corps de ballet, a 100-voice chorus, and a 55-piece orchestra. There was also a 3100-pipe organ. Along with the stage shows, the musicians and dancers presented tableaux, ballet, and operatic moments. Admission cost 35 to 75 cents. To amuse people waiting to be seated, there were musicians playing in the Grand Lobby, paintings by area artists hung on the walls, and ping pong and billiards downstairs. After the show, couples danced in the Grand Lounge, and in 1932 a small Art Deco restaurant called the Platinum Salon opened in the lounge area.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
[in 1907] the Unique Theatre, an early nickelodeon, opened at the corner of Washington and Kneeland Streets. It became the Stuart in 1925 and the X-rated Pussycat in 1976, before giving way to McDonald’s in the late 1980’s.
According to a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993, this opened as the Park Theatre in 1879. It says:
Lotta Crabtree, the famous actress who subsequently owned the theatre (which was constructed from Beethoven Hall), opened the Park with “La Cigale”. she was followed in later years by Booth, Mansfield, St. Denis, and Nazimova. The theatre was remodeled by Clarence Blackall in 1903 and assumed several other identities (inclding Minsky’s Park burlesque) before its demolition in 1991, at which time it was Boston’s oldest theatre.
As of yesterday the theatre was still standing, but I don’t think any legal impediments remain to prevent demolition. I’ll try to walk by every few days and report any activity.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
In 1909 Architect Clarence Blackall created this 1700-seat fireproof theatre out of steel and reinforced concrete. The curved first balcony seemed to be held up without visible support. Above it was a steep gallery. Twenty brass-railed boxes rose in three tiers at each side of the proscenium. The Gaiety is fronted by a six-story office building under which runs a long entry from Washington Street.
Preceding the Gaiety on the site were the Boylston Museum (1875-85), the World’s Museum (1887-90) and the Lyceum Theatre from 1893 to 1907. The Gaiety became the Publix movie theatre in 1950, which closed in the 1980s.
According to a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1996 this theatre was originally called “Gordon’s Olympia”. The booklet says:
Architect Clarence Blackall designed the Olympia Theatre in 1912 within an existing 1891 office building designed by Winslow and Wetherell. It had a vaulted, frescoed ceiling. There were four floors of offices over a shell-like theatre entrance with a stucco finish. Its auditorium was in the very rear of its block, preceded by a group of vestibules containing stairways, restrooms, and one of the first theatre escalators that ran through a former carpet store, which fronted on Washington Street. The theatre held 2500 people in an orchestra, two balconies, and fourteen brass-railed boxes. The Olympia offered vaudeville and films. In 1996, the theatre, considered the oldest in continual use in Boston, was slated for demolition.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
In is prime, the Paramount was an outstanding example of Art Deco theatre architecture, representing the first use of this style in a boston theatre. Typical was the inclusion of natural forms, such as shells, sunbursts, and flowers, which were stylized to appear more slender and elegant. Geometric motifs were also employed, the most common being the ziggurat. The theatre was designed by architect Arthur Bowditch. It was built in 1932 and exemplified a reordering of priorities taking place in theatres across the country. When sound films were introduced, they were able to attract audiences without the addition of a stage show. Consequently, the Paramount (seating 1500) was considerably smaller than most earlier Boston theatres. Acoustics were carefuly considered, to take advantage of the “talkies”. Unfortunately much of the interior detail was destroyed or damaged with the removal of asbestos some years ago. The Paramount is a Boston Landmark and is located within the Washington Street Theatre National Register Historic District.
The booklet also says this was the last new theatre building to be constructed in this part of Boston.
If you look up at the restored façade, you’ll see a Paramount Pictures logo on the left, and a Publix Theatres logo on the right.
It would be nice to replace the photo here with a newer one.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
Designed by Thomas Lamb, the Keith Memorial Theatre (later the Savoy and, most recently, the Opera House) was constructed in 1928 in the Mediterranen Baroque/Beaux-Arts tradition. The 26-foot-wide by 96-foot-high, high-relief façade on Washington Street is of glazed white terra cotta. The theatre extends 307 feet through the block to a rear entrance on Mason Street. The original bronze ticket booth, bronze poster display cases, and ceiling chandelier and wall sconces are intact. The sumptuous interior combines elements of the European Baroque and English “Adam” styles, with a color scheme of white, red, and gold.
The building has experiencd only minor alterations and is in relatively good condition throughout. The stair landing on the second floor is referred to as Memorial Hall because it was originally the location of the bust of B.F. Keith, theatre developer and impresario.
Dedicated to Benjamin Franklin Keith (1846-1914), the founder of vaudeville, the theatre was planned by his successors as a lavish tribute to his memory. During the 1890’s Keith established a chain of popularly priced theatres, which by his death numbered 400. He is baried in the Newton Centre Cemtery, his grave fittingly marked by an enormous Corinthian column.
The Keith Memorial was buit on the foundation of the 1854 Boston Theatre, a grand theatre/opera house with a seating capacity of 3140.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
In 1913 C.H. Blackall designed a long, narrow, 800-seat cinema which was inserted in the ground floor of the Dobson Building, a five-story Ruskinian Gothic, sandstone warehouse, designed by Levi Newcomb and Son in 1876. Blackall added an elegant but somewhat incongruous two-story, Florentine Renaissance, white marble façade to the building.
He was aided in the theatre design by acoustician Wallace Sabine, a Harvard professor who first applied scientific principles to the study of sound and space. It was Sabine and Blackall’s only collaboration.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
The ill-fated Plymouth Theatre, at 131 Stuart Street, opened in 1911. Designed by C.H. Blackall, it hosted many major openings including “The Man Who Came to Dinner” and the American premier of “Playboy of the Western World.” It became the Gary Cinema in 1958 and was demolished for the State Transportation Building in 1978.
The booklet also mentioned an abandoned system of pedestrian tunnels linking the Plymouth, the Majestic, the Colonial, and the Little Building to the Boylston subway station.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
An extravaganza of Beaux Arts detail inside and out, the Majestic Theatre was designed by John Galen Howard and J.M. Wood for merchant and music patron Eben D. Jordan Jr., son of the founder of Jordan Marsh and Company [department store]. It opened on February 16, 1903 with a musical fantasy called “The Storks”. The Majestic is the only known Boston work of Howard, who was MIT- and Beaux Arts-trained and went on to a distinguished career at the University of California in Berkeley. The gray terra cotta façade dominates Tremont Street, with its ornamentation cast in high relief.
Its small but highly decorated lobby, with murals by William de Leftwich Dodge, fine stained glass windows, mirrored walls, and a heavily gilded frieze in relief, leads to the auditorium with its series of arches proceeding from that of the proscenium, each one higher than the last, until reaching the gallery ceiling. It was the first theatre to integrate electrical fixtures into the architectural fabric and the first to be constructed without balcony support columns, thus ensuring an unobstructed view of the stage. Its distinctive curved shape, likened to the inside of a megaphone, accounts for its superior acoustics.
For half a century the Majestic featured such luminaries as Ethel Merman, Harry Houdini, Lena Horne, the Marx Brothers, and W.C. Fields. In 1956 it was sold to the Sack Cinema chain and converted into a movie house called the Saxon. It suffered from unfortunate alterations, neglect, and misuse. In 1983 Emerson College purchased the Majestic for its performing arts program and began a meticulous restoration. The Majestic is a Boston Landmark.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
This was the second theatre called “Globe” in Boston. Designed by Arthur Vinal, it opened in 1903. Its two-story, Romanesque entrance arch was cut into panels with centered light bulbs. The facing was light brick and terra cotta, topped with friezework, cornice, and balustrae. On the latter were eleven bronze posts topped with lamps. The Globe was famous for burlesque in the 1930’s with Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fannie Brice, Sophie Tucker, W.C. Fields, Abbott & Costello, and Gypsy Rose Lee among its performers.
By the way, I’m not convinced this theater was ever called “Century”. I think it should be listed here as “Center”, although in its final years as an Asian cinema it had the name “Pagoda”.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993. It says:
The Tremont Theatre, designed by J.B. McElfatrick Sons, appeared on the site of the [former] Haymarket Theatre in 1889, using a three-story granite building, designed in 1869 by N.J. Bradlee, as an entrance. Sarah Bernhardt played in “La Tosca”, and “Birth of a Nation” opened in 1915. It was remodeled as the Astor Theatre in 1949 and demolished in 1983.
It its declining years of the 1970s, I believe it was called “Essex Theatre” or “Essex Cinema”. It definitely wasn’t called “Boston Cinerama” or “RKO Boston” anymore.
And when they moved the entrance around the corner onto Essex Street and began showing Asian films, I think it got yet another name, “Star Cinema”.
I have a booklet called “Boston Theatre District: A Walking Tour”, published by the Boston Preservation Alliance in 1993, It says:
“In 1925 a theatre was installed in the rear of the [Washington-Essex] building, called the Keith Albee Boston, designed by Thomas Lamb, the country’s best known 20th century theatre architect. Its presentations of live entertainment continued through the 1940s. The theatre became Boston Cinerama from 1961 to 1966 and was subsequently subdivided and partially modernized. it is current vacant, following a short career as a Chinese theatre.”
Following up my earlier post regarding seeing the theatre from Essex Street:
You have to do this at night. If you try during the day, as I did a few hours ago, you won’t see much because of bright reflections off the glass doors.
I have no idea why the interior of the unused theatre appears to be lit at night.
When the Pilgrim closed, it was the last remaining X-rated movie house in Boston. All of the others had already been torn down, closed, or converted to non-theatre uses.
The State has been torn down – one of the Millennium/Ritz-Carlton towers is now on its site.
The Pilgrim has been torn down – a condominium tower called “Park Essex” is now under construction on its site.
The Center is now a large, fancy Chinese restaurant.
Where the Stuart entrance was, there’s now a McDonald’s. I don’t know if any remnant of the theatre sits behind it.
The Publix (originally Gaiety) could be torn down literally any day now, as courts are rejecting litigation to preserve it. I’m posting regular updates on that situation.