Pastime Theatre
581 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02111
581 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02111
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This is a puzzle. 581 Washington st was on the north corner of Avery st, adjacent to the Clark’s Hotel, as mentioned above, and owned by Abraham Shuman. However, it was the other side of Avery st that was torn down when Avery st was widened. This is where the Avery hotel was then built. The name Pastime doesn’t show up on the maps, so they would have been leasing space. http://i1080.photobucket.com/albums/j324/MarkBul/pastime1908.jpg
In his Boston theaters history book, Don King also mentions that the Pastime Th. opened in February 1908, but has nothing more to say about it. It is not listed in Joe Cifre’s essay “Saga of the Movie Industry in Boston”, but I don’t think his summary of early Boston cinemas was meant to be comprehensive. Charles Grandgent, in his 1932 essay, “The Stage in Boston in the Last Fifty Years” says that the Pastime was on Washington Street, “over the old Clark’s Hotel”, but the Boston Globe description above seems to imply that the Pastime was of new construction. At that time Avery Street was little more than an alley and it did not go through to Tremont Street at its west end as it does today. So it was widened, and the comment above that the Pastime was in the way of the widening construction makes sense.