Copley Place Cinemas
100 Huntington Avenue,
Boston,
MA
02116
100 Huntington Avenue,
Boston,
MA
02116
8 people
favorited this theater
Showing 126 - 134 of 134 comments
This is what I recall of the old downtown and Back Bay Boston movie houses:
converted to live stages:
Orpheum – now used mostly for rock concerts
Music Hall – now Wang Center for the Performing Arts
Saxon – now Emerson College’s Cutler Majestic Theatre
Savoy – now the Opera House, reopened this summer and currently featuring “The Lion King"
Cinema 57 – now Stuart Street Playhouse
demolished:
Pilgrim
State (Park)
EM Loew’s West End Cinema
Nickelodeon
converted to other uses:
Paris – now a Walgreen’s drugstore
Cheri – now a nightclub and bowling alley
Beacon Hill – now a Copy Cop
Pi Alley – some other retail use
Stuart – now a McDonald's
Charles – disappeared into Charles River Plaza redevelopment
Park Square – some other office or retail use
Kenmore Square – now Boston University Barnes & Noble bookstore
vacant, awaiting restoration:
Paramount
Modern (Mayflower)
vacant, awaiting possible demolition:
Publix (Gaiety)
vacant, awaiting some new tenant and use:
Exeter Street (which has been Conran’s furniture store, Waterstone’s bookstore, and offices of a dot-bomb called “idealab!”)
The Copley Place has long been the venue for the annual Boston Film Festival. Where would it move to in the event of the theatre’s demise? Loew’s Boston Common? The Kendall Square???…even though it is in Cambridge.
http://www.bostonfilmfestival.org/
Very true but at least we have a few gems left like The Paris, Beekman and to an extent Cinema 1-2-3 and The Metro.
Just to clarify something from my previous post – the Nickelodeon and Cheri both closed in 2001, the former in February and the latter in October of that year.
At least not as functioning movie theatres, Robert. Most of the old movie palaces have either been demolished, are laying in rot (the Gayety on Washington Street, to name one), or, in some fortunate cases, restored and serving – or awaiting restoration to serve – as theatrical or performing arts venues (the Wang Center, the Opera House, and the Paramount, just to name a few).
Growing up in Boston in the ‘80s and '90s, most of the theatres I went to with regularity (the Beacon Hill, the Charles, the Cheri, the Cinema 57, the Nickelodeon, the Paris, and the Pi Alley) closed their doors. Meanwhile, living in Manhattan, most of my favorite smaller places in which to catch a flick (the Art Greenwich, the Murray Hill, the Regency, the Waverly – or, at least its operation as the Waverly) have done the same, essentially to make room for the newer, stadium-seating venues… guess it’s just the evolution, as it is, of film exhibition in general…
On my trips to Boston I was always amazed that all of the city area theatres were gone. Does the above post mean that NONE of the great theatres survived at all?
Initially this had 9 screens. It was later ‘expanded’ to 11.
The newspapers have been expecting this to close ever since Loews Boston Common opened. If it does go dark, Boston will have only two movie theaters wholly within city limits: Loews Boston Common and AMC Fenway.
Wow, you weren’t kidding – check out these house-counts: 120 – 100 – 55 – 150 – 150 – 45 – 67 – 67 – 67 – 75 – 132 – total 1028 seats – according to the Dec. 1999 Loews directory. It’s amusing that the screening room in the home office seats more people than each of the five smallest, dare I say, ‘theatres’ at this location….
With the Copley Place Cinemas' imminent closing, hopefully Loews or another chain (Landmark, perhaps?) will attempt to fill the soon-to-be-existent art-house void within the city of Boston…