Bijou Cinema
Foster Street,
Worcester,
MA
01608
Foster Street,
Worcester,
MA
01608
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: General Cinema Corp.
Previous Names: Worcester Center Cinema I, II, III, Galleria Cinemas
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News About This Theater
- Nov 30, 2004 — Bijou Cinema In Worcester Closes
The Bijou Cinema was a three-screen art cinema located in the Worcester Common Outlets. The facility opened on February 16, 1973 as the Worcester Center Cinema I, II, III, operated by General Cinemas Corp. It became the Galleria Cinemas, was shuttered a long while, and then reopened as the Bijou Cinema.
The theatre closed again in November of 2004 to be razed for an expansion of the mall. One of the final films shown at the Bijou Cinema was a revival of “The Last Picture Show”. It was demolished in October 2014.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 16 comments)
Here’s a photo of the Bijou marquee and entrance area taken a while back.
View link
In July of 1984, when this was the Galleria, I saw Electric Dreams. The last films I saw here were Zelary, a very long Czech film, and the director’s cut of Donnie Darko on November 6, 2004, shortly before the place closed.
Although it sounds like this isn’t the same theater, there was another theater called the Bijou in Worcester. It played silent films in 1912. Later the building was turned into a five-and-dime store. It sounds like the old Bijou was located at Eighth and Millbury Street.
for more information, there’s a 1978 audio interview (with transcript) with one of the owners at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/102
I had just moved to the Worcester area in 1978, when it was the Worcester Center Cinema. I remember walking the mall, then going to see a movie afterwards. We used to joke about the size of the screens :–)
If I remember correctly, didn’t they used to show plays there too?
Was there another Family Theater in Worcester? This was in Boxoffice magazine in January 1960:
WORCESTER, MASS.-The E.M. Loew circuit, operator of the Family Theater here for many years, has placed a “For Rent or For Sale” sign on the marquee. The house has been shuttered since last spring. The circuit continues to run the Plymouth, a first run, here.
The Bijou appears to be a shopping mall theater, opened in 1973 according to the post on 11/30/74. It doesn’t fit.
The theatre was located on Foster Street (not Front Street) on the lower level of the former Worcester Center Galleria shopping complex. It was initially operated by General Cinemas and offered first-run films. (I can remember seeing more than my share of Disney films here when I was growing-up) For a time in the mid-to-late 1980s they started adding foreign and what we’d now call “independent” films on one of the screens before General Cinemas called it quits.
As of 10/21/2014, this cinema is a pile of rubble, as the CityScape project is finally moving forward and the section of the old Fashion Outlets it was housed in has been razed. Please update the listing accordingly – thanks!
This first opened as a General Cinema, called the GCC Worcester Center Cinema as early as September 1973 as a triplex. The theater also went under a secondary name of “GCC Galleria Mall Cinemas”.
It became the Bijou Cinema sometime around 2001 and closed in late 2004.
Opened on February 16th, 1973, as the Worchester Ctr. Cinema I-II-III. Grand opening ad posted.