Ann Arbor I & II
210 S. 5th Avenue,
Ann Arbor,
MI
48104
210 S. 5th Avenue,
Ann Arbor,
MI
48104
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: Goodrich Quality Theaters
Architects: Lester Fader
Previous Names: Vth Forum, Fifth Forum
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News About This Theater
- Feb 4, 2014 — Fifth Forum repurposed as office
The Vth Forum, or Fifth Forum, opened as an art and foreign film house on December 9, 1966 with Jean Luc Goddard’s “The Married Woman”. It was operated by Roger and Kenneth Robinson, who also owned the Ypsi-Ann and Scio Drive-In’s. Its architect was Lester Fader. Though its decor was typical late-1960’s style, the theater offered a pair of comfortable lounges and sold coffee in its lobby decades before the current trend in today’s megaplexes became popular. The theater opened with 560-seats.
In early-1979, the Vth Forum was sold to Goodrich Theatres and was renamed the Ann Arbor Theatre a few months later. A year later, Goodrich twinned the Ann Arbor, renamed the Ann Arbor I & II, with one auditorium seating 155, and the other seating 325.
In the late-1980’s, there were plans to raze the theater, and erect a 15 story condominium on the site, but this never came to fruition.
The Ann Arbor continued to operate as a venue for first-run commercial, art and foreign features for many years, but closed in July 1999.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Recent comments (view all 7 comments)
The Vth Forum, later called the Fifth Forum, got its name from its location on Ann Arbor’s Fifth Avenue (between Liberty and Washington streets), where it replaced an earlier building that housed Schroen’s Swiss Cleaners, a drycleaning outfit. The theater’s architect, Lester Fader, was a professor of architecture at the University of Michigan. The two theaters that resulted from the longitudinal split of the original auditorium were called the Ann Arbor I and II, not Ann Arbor 2. In the late 1990s, after the building has stood vacant awhile, the theater’s sloping floor was leveled and the structure was given a jazzy stainless steel (or is it aluminum?) jacket as part of its conversion to an office building for WebElite, a local internet web design company. When that company failed in the dotcom nosedive, its young entrepreneur owner Jacques Habra, who still owned the building, converted it to a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern-themed tobacco smoker’s paradise, with
narghiles (water pipes) as an exotic lure.
Pictures: 1999, 2002
I saw Blue Velvet here. Not an exceptional cinema, but it certainly contributed to the burgeoning cinema culture of Ann Arbor in the late 1980s. At that time, there was a number of groups hosting screenings on campus; so many that one generally had the choice of several films on every night. Sadly, shortly after I graduated the school decided to raise the auditorium use fees and wiped out the cinema groups.
Love to have that “Twilight Zone-the Movie” one sheet.
opened on December 9th, 1966. Grand opening ad posted.
Renamed Ann Arbor on June 8th, 1979, after being upgraded by Goodrich Quality Theatres.
Closed in July 1999.