According to William H. Jordy’s Buildings in Rhode Island, the theatre building was at the very start the Zion Episcopal Church (1835), with numerous alterations later made up to 1976. It was designed by Russell Warren and once boasted a pure temple facade with a splendid free standing Ionic colonnade across the entire front.
The original architects for this theatre (as the 1915 Toy Theatre) were William R. Walker & Sons, architects of the Majestic in Providence, which is now the Trinity Rep (Lederer) Theatre. In 1938 there was a Moderne remodeling when it became the Avon.
Here’s a 1970 photo of the Empire with posters of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and a couple of other movies. The theatre generally has two nightly shows of the same film, with occasional rainy-day matinees. Expand the photo for better resolution.
Ha ha! Is it a typo again? It’s Scorsese, –sese, not –cese. I’m glad we like a lot of the same films, especially Visconti’s Rocco and Il Gattopardo. They’re incredibly great.
I don’t want to be a pain in the butt, and I misspell things too, but I get annoyed at the frequent misspellings by many folks of the last names of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. I guess it bothers me because I am an Italian American. So that leads me to recommend to you Martin Scorsese’s “family film” entitled Italianamerican if you haven’t seen it. It’s a hoot.
I agree! I only went there a handful of times, in its later years, and loved the place. I would rank it in the top four of the most beautiful R.I. theatres that I ever had the chance to see, along with Providence’s Loew’s State, R.K.O. Albee, and Majestic.
From Hope Valley Revived – The Recorded Past: Photographs and Oral History (1997)
“Local groups enjoyed putting on plays and dances at Chase’s Hall (formerly called Barber Hall). They had the live wires of the church put on plays and they put on a different play each night that lasted maybe a hour—an hour and a half… And then they had masquerades. They dressed up and it was a dance and you wore masks.” (…) (Hazel Ritchie)
“I found the lease where Anson Clarke leased the whole hall upstairs for use of entertainment, for showing movies, about 1914. He had to have a special arrangement made to have this booth built for showing pictures and there were restrictions on it. That was about 1914 or so. I’ve got a copy of it with the date. but you see the movies didn’t begin until about that time and I remember Anson Clarke coming up to the house trying to induce my folks to go and take us children and my mother didn’t approve of it.” (Gladys Segar)
I visited the place today to see Wedding Crashers. The auditorium I was in seemed to have rather new seats and was very clean and fresh, as must be the case with the rest of the auditoriums. At the entrance to the theatre from inside Harbour Place Mall, there was no large display of titles and starting times, only a bulletin-board size listing. The entrance area is not quite a lobby so much as a disconcerting wide Chunnel into the theatre. The carpeting here has a pattern that is a mixture of film reels and popcorn boxes. I wonder if they want you to buy something to eat? The projection was OK except that about 18 inches of the left side of the Scope image was projected onto black masking not drawn far enough to the left to expose that part of the screen.
I found references to a “Victory Theatre” in Putnam in 1948. But it was suggested that this was probably a (temporary) renaming of the Bradley. Changing the name of a theatre to “Victory” was a common practice after World War II.
RobertR,
Regarding The Savage is Loose…I believe I read that George C. Scott four-walled the Eastside Cinema (or perhaps it was another place in move-over) for an extended period of time to show the film, and it kept playing to a near-empty house. It was a bit of a turkey.
Roger, those are nice photos and I had looked at them before posting the theatre. The rear loft doesn’t show a projection booth. I don’t remember what the projection booth looked like when I went there. Do you know about that? What kind of programming was there in the 1940s? Art-house type films?
I went here to see a film on August 5, 1984 when the Italian film The Basileus Quartet by Fabio Carpi was the program. Rows of moveable seats were on the flat floor. Dark curtains, I believe, covered the windows that are on the hall. The projection was 35mm. They were equipped with both 35mm and 16mm. I noted that the picture was not bright enough and that the sound was not the best. I think the programs were seasonal. I do not remember programs from other years, and this was the only time I went. Perhaps some locals with good memories can give other details on the use of this place as a cinema.
I remember going there three days in a row in July of 1992 to see Cabeza de Vaca, Night on Earth, and The Hairdresser’s Husband. This web page has additional information on the Lumiere and a small photo.
The exact address where the Bijou used to be located is now occupied by a restaurant called Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining, a rather sizable establishment. It has been there for many decades. It looks entirely like a post-Bijou building and none of the original theatre appears to have survived. The location is right next to the railroad overpass on Main Street, behind the historic Woonsocket Depot. Further up Main Street, at Monument Square, is the Stadium Theatre, Woonsocket’s only preserved movie palace. Just beyond the Stadium on the same side but across the square, would have been the Park Theatre/Woonsocket Opera House, destroyed in a 1975 fire.
Among the few films I remember seeing here, one was Imamura’s Black Rain around 1990. It dealt with the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing and was a very grim film starkly shot in black and white. Another was The Butcher Boy in 1997 with the incredible Eamonn Owens in the title role.
I spoke to a very old gentleman at the hardware store in Pascoag today. He pointed out exactly where the Music Hall used to be, a spot that is now a vacant lot since the theatre’s destruction by fire. He remembered going there to see movies as a youth in the 1940s and enjoying the westerns that were often shown there. He recalled a barber shop and ice cream store in the building. The auditorium was on the second floor.
I spoke to an old gentleman in Pascoag today at the hardware store and he said that the Star was located at or very near the spot where the current Subway sandwich shop is located at 130 Main Street.
According to William H. Jordy’s Buildings in Rhode Island, the theatre building was at the very start the Zion Episcopal Church (1835), with numerous alterations later made up to 1976. It was designed by Russell Warren and once boasted a pure temple facade with a splendid free standing Ionic colonnade across the entire front.
I believe the Castle opened in 1925. The style is art deco.
The original architect of the Strand was Thomas J. Hill Pierce.
The original architects for this theatre (as the 1915 Toy Theatre) were William R. Walker & Sons, architects of the Majestic in Providence, which is now the Trinity Rep (Lederer) Theatre. In 1938 there was a Moderne remodeling when it became the Avon.
Here’s a 1970 photo of the Empire with posters of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and a couple of other movies. The theatre generally has two nightly shows of the same film, with occasional rainy-day matinees. Expand the photo for better resolution.
Ha ha! Is it a typo again? It’s Scorsese, –sese, not –cese. I’m glad we like a lot of the same films, especially Visconti’s Rocco and Il Gattopardo. They’re incredibly great.
I don’t want to be a pain in the butt, and I misspell things too, but I get annoyed at the frequent misspellings by many folks of the last names of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. I guess it bothers me because I am an Italian American. So that leads me to recommend to you Martin Scorsese’s “family film” entitled Italianamerican if you haven’t seen it. It’s a hoot.
Nice. But I would find it even more tantalizing to see the listing on the right of what was playing in all those theatres at that time!
I agree! I only went there a handful of times, in its later years, and loved the place. I would rank it in the top four of the most beautiful R.I. theatres that I ever had the chance to see, along with Providence’s Loew’s State, R.K.O. Albee, and Majestic.
Here is a photo of the lobby, stairs, ceiling, rear of the auditorium of the Leroy Theatre.
From Hope Valley Revived – The Recorded Past: Photographs and Oral History (1997)
“Local groups enjoyed putting on plays and dances at Chase’s Hall (formerly called Barber Hall). They had the live wires of the church put on plays and they put on a different play each night that lasted maybe a hour—an hour and a half… And then they had masquerades. They dressed up and it was a dance and you wore masks.” (…) (Hazel Ritchie)
“I found the lease where Anson Clarke leased the whole hall upstairs for use of entertainment, for showing movies, about 1914. He had to have a special arrangement made to have this booth built for showing pictures and there were restrictions on it. That was about 1914 or so. I’ve got a copy of it with the date. but you see the movies didn’t begin until about that time and I remember Anson Clarke coming up to the house trying to induce my folks to go and take us children and my mother didn’t approve of it.” (Gladys Segar)
I visited the place today to see Wedding Crashers. The auditorium I was in seemed to have rather new seats and was very clean and fresh, as must be the case with the rest of the auditoriums. At the entrance to the theatre from inside Harbour Place Mall, there was no large display of titles and starting times, only a bulletin-board size listing. The entrance area is not quite a lobby so much as a disconcerting wide Chunnel into the theatre. The carpeting here has a pattern that is a mixture of film reels and popcorn boxes. I wonder if they want you to buy something to eat? The projection was OK except that about 18 inches of the left side of the Scope image was projected onto black masking not drawn far enough to the left to expose that part of the screen.
I found references to a “Victory Theatre” in Putnam in 1948. But it was suggested that this was probably a (temporary) renaming of the Bradley. Changing the name of a theatre to “Victory” was a common practice after World War II.
RobertR,
Regarding The Savage is Loose…I believe I read that George C. Scott four-walled the Eastside Cinema (or perhaps it was another place in move-over) for an extended period of time to show the film, and it kept playing to a near-empty house. It was a bit of a turkey.
Roger, those are nice photos and I had looked at them before posting the theatre. The rear loft doesn’t show a projection booth. I don’t remember what the projection booth looked like when I went there. Do you know about that? What kind of programming was there in the 1940s? Art-house type films?
I went here to see a film on August 5, 1984 when the Italian film The Basileus Quartet by Fabio Carpi was the program. Rows of moveable seats were on the flat floor. Dark curtains, I believe, covered the windows that are on the hall. The projection was 35mm. They were equipped with both 35mm and 16mm. I noted that the picture was not bright enough and that the sound was not the best. I think the programs were seasonal. I do not remember programs from other years, and this was the only time I went. Perhaps some locals with good memories can give other details on the use of this place as a cinema.
I remember going there three days in a row in July of 1992 to see Cabeza de Vaca, Night on Earth, and The Hairdresser’s Husband. This web page has additional information on the Lumiere and a small photo.
There is a legend has that a ghost haunts the bathrooms in the rear of the theatre building.
Here is a link to a drawing of a proposed Music Hall Pavillion to be erected in the vacant lot where the original Music Hall once stood in Pascoag.
Here is a really not very good photo showing the Scenic in 1938 and taken in the time after a hurricane had rampaged through New England.
The exact address where the Bijou used to be located is now occupied by a restaurant called Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining, a rather sizable establishment. It has been there for many decades. It looks entirely like a post-Bijou building and none of the original theatre appears to have survived. The location is right next to the railroad overpass on Main Street, behind the historic Woonsocket Depot. Further up Main Street, at Monument Square, is the Stadium Theatre, Woonsocket’s only preserved movie palace. Just beyond the Stadium on the same side but across the square, would have been the Park Theatre/Woonsocket Opera House, destroyed in a 1975 fire.
Among the few films I remember seeing here, one was Imamura’s Black Rain around 1990. It dealt with the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing and was a very grim film starkly shot in black and white. Another was The Butcher Boy in 1997 with the incredible Eamonn Owens in the title role.
I spoke to a very old gentleman at the hardware store in Pascoag today. He pointed out exactly where the Music Hall used to be, a spot that is now a vacant lot since the theatre’s destruction by fire. He remembered going there to see movies as a youth in the 1940s and enjoying the westerns that were often shown there. He recalled a barber shop and ice cream store in the building. The auditorium was on the second floor.
I spoke to an old gentleman in Pascoag today at the hardware store and he said that the Star was located at or very near the spot where the current Subway sandwich shop is located at 130 Main Street.
This web page has a small picture of the Majestic Theatre in the 1920s, I believe.