Rex Theater
2 Western Avenue,
Cambridge,
MA
02139
2 Western Avenue,
Cambridge,
MA
02139
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Originally known as “The Cambridge”
https://www.hippostcard.com/listing/cambridge-ma-theatre-c1910-postcard-scarce/11319009
Thanks for the correction, link0612. I wasn’t aware that the two companies used different coloring styles.
Gerald DeLuca’s link to the 1948 Boxoffice article about the opening of the Rex is dead. The article is now at this location. It has no photos, unfortunately.
Actually, the Olympia is shown in brown on the Bromley map (not Sanborn!) because it was made of stone. Sanborn and Bromley used different coloring styles. You can also see the Olympia in brown on the 1930 Bromley atlas: http://www.wardmaps.com/viewasset.php?aid=411
The reason the Olympia Theatre was shown in brown on the Sanborn map that Ron Newman linked to on March 1, 2006, is because it was still under construction at the time the map was drawn. The April 22, 1916, issue of The American contractor reported that architect William Mowll was preparing plans for the Olympia Theatre Company’s new house at Cambridge. The firm of Mowll & Rand also designed the company’s Olympia Theatre at New Bedford, opened the same year.
An article on the opening of the Rex can be found in Boxoffice Magazine, October 30, 1948:
http://issuu.com/boxoffice/docs/boxoffice_103048
Go to page 75.
Thank you. Do you know when and why it closed and was torn down?
This Olympia theatre was the Rex theatre when I was growing up in Central Sq around 1950. I remember Superman there many times—RikS
Ass far as I know, there was just one Olympia Th. in Cambridge in 1919. Although the MGM Report says it had 600 seats, the 1927 FDY lists 900.
Seems very doubtful to me that there would have been two different theatres with this name.
The Cambridge Historical Commission lists the period of existence for the Olympia Theatre as 1910 – 1954.
This 1916 map shows the Olympia Theatre. It is near the map’s top left corner, colored brown, in the narrow triangle bounded by Western Avenue, River Street, and Franklin Street.
By the 1970s, this site contained a gas station. Some time in the 1990s, the gas station was torn down and replaced by the current not-very-useful open green space.
The Olympia is listed in the 1927 Film Daily yearbook as being open 7 days a week and having 900 seats. I can’t find it in the 1942-43 Motion Picture Almanac, which means that it was managed by a company with 4 or fewer theatres. The MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for the Olympia has an exterior photo taken in April 1941. The marquee is at the narrow end of the oddly-shaped building and has 3 lines of white letters on a black background, above which is the word “Continuous”. Flat against the narrow wall above is a vertical sign “Olympia”. The Report states that the Olympia has been showing MGM product for over 10 years; that it’s over 15 years old; that it’s in Poor condition; and that it has 400 seats on the main floor and 200 in the balcony. To look at this distinctive building, one would never guess that it contained a theater.