South Shore Theater
Kenberma Street,
Hull,
MA
02045
Kenberma Street,
Hull,
MA
02045
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The Nantasket Beach station of the railroad is still standing and is the location of the old carousel from the Paragon Park amusement park at the Beach. Very close by to the west was the dock for the excursion boats from downtown Boston. Hull was a lively place in the summer many years ago.
I took the reference to be to the railroad station, though the name probably applied to the entire neighborhood for several blocks around. The railroad R/O/W was between Manomet Avenue and Samoset Avenue, and the station itself was a few yards north of Kenberma Street. The station and railroad are gone, but this Wikimedia page has two vintage photos. Several houses in the photos can still be picked out in Google street view. The theater would almost certainly have been in the small business district around Kenberma and Nantasket Avenue a couple of blocks west of the station.
The “Kenberma station” referred to in Joe Vogel’s posting could be a local post office, or could be the rail station on the New Haven RR line which ran from Nantasket Junction, south of Hingham, almost all the way to the end of the Hull peninsular and which had frequent passenger trains as of 1916. The Apollo Theatre was near Nantasket Beach while the Bayside Th. was further north in the Bayside area, so this 1916 item seems certainly to refer to the South Shore Theatre in the Kenberma neighborhood.
The South Shore Theatre might have been a 1916 project noted in the April 22 issue of The American Contractor that year. It was to be a one-story brick and concrete moving picture theater to cost $35,000. The location was given as “Kemberma sta., Hull, Mass.” and the owner was named William F. Eccles, of Somerville, Massachusetts. Stephen S. Ward of Boston was the architect.
Recently, I saw a list of “forgotten movie theaters in South Shore towns” and the South Shore Theatre in Hull was on this list. I checked the list for any unfamiliar names; there were none.