The Avon was not the first art house in Rhode Island. The Modern Theatre, downtown at 440 Westminster Street, had opened three years earlier with an “art” policy in February of 1935 and calling itself the Modern Fine Arts Theatre or variations of that name.
On February 19, 1935, the Providence Journal reported the Modern’s newly announced policy:
FIRST ART CINEMA IN R.I. OPENED
“Films not otherwise available here, will be offered at the Modern which will be operated on a policy similar to the Fine Arts in Boston and the Cameo and Westminster Theatres in New York.
"Since closing several weeks ago, the house has been repainted, chairs have been repaired, and a new sound and projection system hs been installed.”
A newspaper ad by the theatre a day before promised, “The majority of the pictures will be English speaking and there will also be foreign speaking pictures such as French, German, Polish, Jewish, Italian, Swedish and others. Foreign speaking pictures will run one day or two days only depending upon the demand.”
The first movie offered under the new policy was Robert Flaherty’s Man of Aran. The Journal reviewer Garrett D. Byrnes wrote of the film: “For its debut as an art cinema the Modern Theatre offers nothing less than a masterpiece.”
The theatre continued the policy on and off for a few years, and for a while the style of programming might have overlapped with that of the Avon on Thayer Street, whose art policy began in 1938 with its opening. Later the theatre returned to live offerings, before returning to some art-house type films in the 1950s and before the theatre was ultimately closed and demolished.
Here is a photo of the interior of the Low’s-Keith’s-Victory-Empire. In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett calls this “the most graceful sweep of balconies ever to be seen in a Providence theater.”
He adds, “It had only the lower balcony when built; the gallery was added in 1882. As in the Providence Opera House and the Westminster, gallery gods sat, not on chairs, but on hard wooden benches.”
In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives the short history of the doomed theatre across the street from the Nickel called the Lyric:
“Next was the Lyric Theater at 303 Westminster Street, opening on March 10, 1907. It was a converted store and one of the few movie house failures, closing about seven weeks later. The Lyric’s proprietors, whose identity has been mercifully lost in the mists of time, right from the start conducted a smear-filled advertising campaign directed at Abe Spitz’s Nickel across the street. Abe, who was no neophyte at this game, responded in kind. (When his Empire had a season of summer vaudeville following the closing of Keith’s headline winter season, Spitz presumptuously bannerlined his newspaper ads, ‘After the Minnow Comes the Whale.’) Since the Lyric was obviously run by green-horns, it is not at all unlikely that the veteran showman Spitz prevailed upon a few distributors then in business to forget about delivering the Lyric’s films. Whatever the reason, the store-front operation soon folded; and in 1907 a movie house didn’t fold for no reason at all.”
In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives the short history of this doomed theatre:
“Next was the Lyric Theater at 303 Westminster Street, opening on March 10, 1907. It was a converted store and one of the few movie house failures, closing about seven weeks later. The Lyric’s proprietors, whose identity has been mercifully lost in the mists of time, right from the start conducted a smear-filled advertising campaign directed at Abe Spitz’s Nickel across the street. Abe, who was no neophyte at this game, responded in kind. (When his Empire had a season of summer vaudeville following the closing of Keith’s headline winter season, Spitz presumptuously bannerlined his newspaper ads, ‘After the Minnow Comes the Whale.’) Since the Lyric was obviously run by green-horns, it is not at all unlikely that the veteran showman Spitz prevailed upon a few distributors then in business to forget about delivering the Lyric’s films. Whatever the reason, the store-front operation soon folded; and in 1907 a movie house didn’t fold for no reason at all.”
Newport’s Three Moving Picture Houses.
That was the heading of an October 1908 article clipped from an unidentified newspaper. The Star, Bijou, and Empire were those three undoubtedly smallish movie houses. Tiny photos of the three theatres appeared at the head of the article which was saved in a Newport resident’s personal scrapbook, now at the Newport Historical Society. The article does not go on to describe the theatres pictured, but instead talks about the motion picture medium itself and how it works. Movies were still a novelty then, but one that was capturing people’s attention here as everywhere. It was enough to cause three theatres to pop up in a short span of time and dedicated to presenting them in the city-by-the-sea. The Lafayette/Strand and the Opera House were not movie theatres, and the Colonial, a movie and vaudeville house, would not open until 1911. The Paramount, Newport’s grandest and most beautiful movie theatre, would not open until 1929. A perusal of the Newport Daily News of the period did not show any ads for these theatres' programs. Business may have been drummed up through printed flyers or may have relied heavily on walk-by interest.
Newport’s Three Moving Picture Houses.
That was the heading of an October 1908 article clipped from an unidentified newspaper. The Star, Bijou, and Empire were those three undoubtedly smallish movie houses. Tiny photos of the three theatres appeared at the head of the article which was saved in a Newport resident’s personal scrapbook, now at the Newport Historical Society. The article does not go on to describe the theatres pictured, but instead talks about the motion picture medium itself and how it works. Movies were still a novelty then, but one that was capturing people’s attention here as everywhere. It was enough to cause three theatres to pop up in a short span of time and dedicated to presenting them in the city-by-the-sea. The Lafayette/Strand and the Opera House were not movie theatres, and the Colonial, a movie and vaudeville house, would not open until 1911. The Paramount, Newport’s grandest and most beautiful movie theatre, would not open until 1929. A perusal of the Newport Daily News of the period did not show any ads for these theatres' programs. Business may have been drummed up through printed flyers or may have relied heavily on walk-by interest.
A Mrs. M. J. Wiswell was listed in directories as proprietor of this house.
Newport’s Three Moving Picture Houses.
That was the heading of an October 1908 article clipped from an unidentified newspaper. The Star, Bijou, and Empire were those three undoubtedly smallish movie houses. Tiny photos of the three theatres appeared at the head of the article which was saved in a Newport resident’s personal scrapbook, now at the Newport Historical Society. The article does not go on to describe the theatres pictured, but instead talks about the motion picture medium itself and how it works. Movies were still a novelty then, but one that was capturing people’s attention here as everywhere. It was enough to cause three theatres to pop up in a short span of time and dedicated to presenting them in the city-by-the-sea. The Lafayette/Strand and the Opera House were not movie theatres, and the Colonial, a movie and vaudeville house, would not open until 1911. The Paramount, Newport’s grandest and most beautiful movie theatre, would not open until 1929. A perusal of the Newport Daily News of the period did not show any ads for these theatres' programs. Business may have been drummed up through printed flyers or may have relied heavily on walk-by interest.
The film Never on Sunday with Melina Mercouri, played here in September, 1961. It had already appeared before that at the Academy and was now doing a grind run here with six showings between noon to 9:27 P.M. Ads even appeared in the Newport Daily News.
A couple of tidbits about the Paramount follow. The gentleman at the Newport Historical Society told me that on the opening day (August 10, 1929) one of the patrons was Gladys Szechenyi, the grand-daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who had the great mansion “The Breakers” built. In later years she came to the Society to find out what had been playing on that day. It was Charming Sinners with Ruth Chatterton.
The Paramount closed at the end of April, 1961. Its last shows were either on Saturday, April 29, or Sunday, April 30. The last newspaper ad in the Newport Daily News appeared on that Saturday. The paper was not published on Sunday. No ad appeared on Monday or in succeeding weeks and months. The last film was The Absent-Minded Professsor with Fred MacMurray and Nancy Olson. It played along with the Disney short Islands of the Sea.
An on-site inspection of the address revealed a relatively low building housing vacant shops. This building may have replaced the theatre building. Or else, given a change of numbering, the building next door at 1227, now a R.I. Registry of Motor Vehicles facility, looks like it could have been have been a theatre at one time.
The interior, though very large, was extremely barren and plain, like an immense barn. It had no charm. The theatre was unable to successfully book major Hollywood films in first-run, and they all went to the Albee, Loew’s State, the Strand, and the Majestic. Some success was seen with touring Broadway shows, symphony concerts, operatic performances, but there were times when the place remained dark for some time between engagements. Roger Brett talks about this theatre extensively in his book Temples of Illusion. In fact he had worked here as a young stage hand for a time. The theatre was the failed brain child of Jacob Conn, who also built the Olympia Theatre in the Olneyville district of the city. The Metropolitan opened in 1932, closed in 1954, was demolished in 1961.
Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan premiered in Providence at this enormous house in March of 1949. That’s the kind of film that would normally have opened at the art-house Avon. It must have done reasonably well, because it appeared here and there at various second run theatres, even drive-ins. The Providence Journal review by Bradford F. Swan was ecstatic.
By some kind of mysterious confluence, Rossellini’s Europe ‘51, under the title of The Greatest Love, would play here in April of 1955. Although it starred Ingrid Bergman, you can be sure this ahead-of-its-time mystical-visionary piece was met with antipathy and snores.
In late April of 1949 this theatre was showing the Roberto Rossellini war-in-Italy film Paisan, which had premiered at the Metropolitan a month before. The theatre was then known as the Victory. The other theatre known as the Victory for a time was Low’s-Keith’s-Victory-Empire, which had closed a year before and had been located at 260 Westminster Street.
In his book Federal Hill for the “Images of America” series, Joe Fuoco notes, “Federal Hill had a picture theatre in the 1920s called Teatro La Serena. Located on Atwells Avenue, it was the scene of much laughter and many tears over the years.”
There is a photo of a 1921 flyer in Italian advertising a live variety show there that was a fund-raiser for the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti.
In November of 1946, when this theatre was called the Empire, one of the films shown in second-run was Roberto Rossellini’s Open City, which had played to great acclaim at the East Side’s Avon Cinema two months earlier. It was about as different a kind of program as had ever played here, theatrical or cinematic. It was paired, incongruously, with the Bob Steele Cinecolor B-Western Northwest Trail. In eighteen months the theatre would be gone.
The Union Theatre was built in 1911 by Charles Allen, who had had some success in recent years with the Scenic Temple on Mathewson Street. He would later be responsible for the great building fiasco of the Hippodrome, which was never fully completed but which opened anyway in 1915 and closed for good a year later. In his volume Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives a short history of the Union Theatre, later know as Fays. (never with an apostrophe, by the way.) Here it in, in synthesis:
“It was nothing unusual either in looks or size and the original 2159 seats were crowded. The stucco exterior and plaster interior walls were equally plain. Green was apparently one of Allen’s favorite colors and the Union’s curtain and grand drape were of this hue. Ed Fay must have had similar tastes because green remained the predominant color of the theater’s decor throughout his ownership too.
“From the very first day, the Union played six acts of vaudeville, four or five short movies, and illustrated songs. The shows were as unspectacular as the house itself, but with a low overhead, they made money. (…)
“Ed Fay, through his Arcadia Amusement Company, bought…Allen’s Union Theater. By then it was no longer playing vaudeville.
“Fay continued the movie policy, originally renaming the theatre Fays Photoplays, and it opened with this euphonious appellation on November 17, 1916. Ed soon changed to a more down-to-earth sounding Fays Theater, but didn’t book the vaudeville he later became famous for until the season of 1917-18….
“Fays always looked a little too much like a side street vaudeville house, which, of course, it was…
“Fays continued with plain old-fashioned vaudeville: jugglers, singers, acrobatic dancers, and comedians, year after year, but beginning in 1931, bookings were eliminated in the summer months.
“In April, 1947, Fay, in an interview published by the Providence Journal said, regarding television: ‘I don’t think it will compete with the movies or with radio in the home. Commercially, I can’t see it at all. It’s all right for a championship prize fight or a football game, but that’s about all. I can’t see it.’
“Badly mauled at the boxoffice by a medium [television] relying heavily on vaudeville acts, Fays Theatre was the first to give up the ghost. Fays, the last old-style vaudeville house in the nation, went dark in the spring of 1951 and was demolished that summer.”
In fact the buildings in the area all seem to be ancillary medical facilities associated with the hospital. The residential character of the neighborhood has all but vanished, although the theatre itself had to have disappeared eons ago. This may have been South Providence’s only movie theatre ever. The Liberty Theatre/Art Cinema sits in the Elmwood district, on the fringes of South Providence. South Providence, incidentally, is a neighborhood of Providence, not a separate entity as with North Providence or East Providence. There is no such place known as West Providence. South Providence was home to lower working class rsidents, often Irish immigrants in the early decades of the 20th Century. Afro-Americans and Latinos predominate in the area now.
The Gaiety opened on September 14, 1914. The Providence Journal reported the event:
“A most attractive little house is the Gaiety, simple in its interior design, yet having sufficient character to make it seem cosy and homelike. The walls of both balcony and orchestra floors are tinged a warm cream color and the proscenium opening is in gold and white. Tapestry hangings at either side relieve the bareness of the walls. The entire house is built of brick, steel, and cement. (…) The audience broke out in applause as the pianist took his seat and the first picture was flashed on the screen.”
Roger Brett in his book Temples of Illusion remarked:
“The Gaiety had no real stage, but unlike earlier movie houses which had been converted from existing buildings, it was a true theater. While much smaller than the other theaters erected at this time and having only 700 seats, it did boast of a balcony. Built and owned by Ottenburg and Kahan, managed by Tom Soriero, it exhibited movies pure and simple; no vaudeville acts, not even illustrated songs.”
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
The Avon was not the first art house in Rhode Island. The Modern Theatre, downtown at 440 Westminster Street, had opened three years earlier with an “art” policy in February of 1935 and calling itself the Modern Fine Arts Theatre or variations of that name.
On February 19, 1935, the Providence Journal reported the Modern’s newly announced policy:
FIRST ART CINEMA IN R.I. OPENED
“Films not otherwise available here, will be offered at the Modern which will be operated on a policy similar to the Fine Arts in Boston and the Cameo and Westminster Theatres in New York.
"Since closing several weeks ago, the house has been repainted, chairs have been repaired, and a new sound and projection system hs been installed.”
A newspaper ad by the theatre a day before promised, “The majority of the pictures will be English speaking and there will also be foreign speaking pictures such as French, German, Polish, Jewish, Italian, Swedish and others. Foreign speaking pictures will run one day or two days only depending upon the demand.”
The first movie offered under the new policy was Robert Flaherty’s Man of Aran. The Journal reviewer Garrett D. Byrnes wrote of the film: “For its debut as an art cinema the Modern Theatre offers nothing less than a masterpiece.”
The theatre continued the policy on and off for a few years, and for a while the style of programming might have overlapped with that of the Avon on Thayer Street, whose art policy began in 1938 with its opening. Later the theatre returned to live offerings, before returning to some art-house type films in the 1950s and before the theatre was ultimately closed and demolished.
Here is a photo of the interior of the Low’s-Keith’s-Victory-Empire. In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett calls this “the most graceful sweep of balconies ever to be seen in a Providence theater.”
He adds, “It had only the lower balcony when built; the gallery was added in 1882. As in the Providence Opera House and the Westminster, gallery gods sat, not on chairs, but on hard wooden benches.”
Rivalry!
In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives the short history of the doomed theatre across the street from the Nickel called the Lyric:
“Next was the Lyric Theater at 303 Westminster Street, opening on March 10, 1907. It was a converted store and one of the few movie house failures, closing about seven weeks later. The Lyric’s proprietors, whose identity has been mercifully lost in the mists of time, right from the start conducted a smear-filled advertising campaign directed at Abe Spitz’s Nickel across the street. Abe, who was no neophyte at this game, responded in kind. (When his Empire had a season of summer vaudeville following the closing of Keith’s headline winter season, Spitz presumptuously bannerlined his newspaper ads, ‘After the Minnow Comes the Whale.’) Since the Lyric was obviously run by green-horns, it is not at all unlikely that the veteran showman Spitz prevailed upon a few distributors then in business to forget about delivering the Lyric’s films. Whatever the reason, the store-front operation soon folded; and in 1907 a movie house didn’t fold for no reason at all.”
In his book Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives the short history of this doomed theatre:
“Next was the Lyric Theater at 303 Westminster Street, opening on March 10, 1907. It was a converted store and one of the few movie house failures, closing about seven weeks later. The Lyric’s proprietors, whose identity has been mercifully lost in the mists of time, right from the start conducted a smear-filled advertising campaign directed at Abe Spitz’s Nickel across the street. Abe, who was no neophyte at this game, responded in kind. (When his Empire had a season of summer vaudeville following the closing of Keith’s headline winter season, Spitz presumptuously bannerlined his newspaper ads, ‘After the Minnow Comes the Whale.’) Since the Lyric was obviously run by green-horns, it is not at all unlikely that the veteran showman Spitz prevailed upon a few distributors then in business to forget about delivering the Lyric’s films. Whatever the reason, the store-front operation soon folded; and in 1907 a movie house didn’t fold for no reason at all.”
I was unable to find an address for this “lost” theatre in any city directories and would appreciate help on that.
Newport’s Three Moving Picture Houses.
That was the heading of an October 1908 article clipped from an unidentified newspaper. The Star, Bijou, and Empire were those three undoubtedly smallish movie houses. Tiny photos of the three theatres appeared at the head of the article which was saved in a Newport resident’s personal scrapbook, now at the Newport Historical Society. The article does not go on to describe the theatres pictured, but instead talks about the motion picture medium itself and how it works. Movies were still a novelty then, but one that was capturing people’s attention here as everywhere. It was enough to cause three theatres to pop up in a short span of time and dedicated to presenting them in the city-by-the-sea. The Lafayette/Strand and the Opera House were not movie theatres, and the Colonial, a movie and vaudeville house, would not open until 1911. The Paramount, Newport’s grandest and most beautiful movie theatre, would not open until 1929. A perusal of the Newport Daily News of the period did not show any ads for these theatres' programs. Business may have been drummed up through printed flyers or may have relied heavily on walk-by interest.
Newport’s Three Moving Picture Houses.
That was the heading of an October 1908 article clipped from an unidentified newspaper. The Star, Bijou, and Empire were those three undoubtedly smallish movie houses. Tiny photos of the three theatres appeared at the head of the article which was saved in a Newport resident’s personal scrapbook, now at the Newport Historical Society. The article does not go on to describe the theatres pictured, but instead talks about the motion picture medium itself and how it works. Movies were still a novelty then, but one that was capturing people’s attention here as everywhere. It was enough to cause three theatres to pop up in a short span of time and dedicated to presenting them in the city-by-the-sea. The Lafayette/Strand and the Opera House were not movie theatres, and the Colonial, a movie and vaudeville house, would not open until 1911. The Paramount, Newport’s grandest and most beautiful movie theatre, would not open until 1929. A perusal of the Newport Daily News of the period did not show any ads for these theatres' programs. Business may have been drummed up through printed flyers or may have relied heavily on walk-by interest.
A Mrs. M. J. Wiswell was listed in directories as proprietor of this house.
Newport’s Three Moving Picture Houses.
That was the heading of an October 1908 article clipped from an unidentified newspaper. The Star, Bijou, and Empire were those three undoubtedly smallish movie houses. Tiny photos of the three theatres appeared at the head of the article which was saved in a Newport resident’s personal scrapbook, now at the Newport Historical Society. The article does not go on to describe the theatres pictured, but instead talks about the motion picture medium itself and how it works. Movies were still a novelty then, but one that was capturing people’s attention here as everywhere. It was enough to cause three theatres to pop up in a short span of time and dedicated to presenting them in the city-by-the-sea. The Lafayette/Strand and the Opera House were not movie theatres, and the Colonial, a movie and vaudeville house, would not open until 1911. The Paramount, Newport’s grandest and most beautiful movie theatre, would not open until 1929. A perusal of the Newport Daily News of the period did not show any ads for these theatres' programs. Business may have been drummed up through printed flyers or may have relied heavily on walk-by interest.
The film Never on Sunday with Melina Mercouri, played here in September, 1961. It had already appeared before that at the Academy and was now doing a grind run here with six showings between noon to 9:27 P.M. Ads even appeared in the Newport Daily News.
The Colonial opened on February 4, 1911, according to a card-file note at the Newport Historical Society.
A couple of tidbits about the Paramount follow. The gentleman at the Newport Historical Society told me that on the opening day (August 10, 1929) one of the patrons was Gladys Szechenyi, the grand-daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who had the great mansion “The Breakers” built. In later years she came to the Society to find out what had been playing on that day. It was Charming Sinners with Ruth Chatterton.
The Paramount closed at the end of April, 1961. Its last shows were either on Saturday, April 29, or Sunday, April 30. The last newspaper ad in the Newport Daily News appeared on that Saturday. The paper was not published on Sunday. No ad appeared on Monday or in succeeding weeks and months. The last film was The Absent-Minded Professsor with Fred MacMurray and Nancy Olson. It played along with the Disney short Islands of the Sea.
An on-site inspection of the address revealed a relatively low building housing vacant shops. This building may have replaced the theatre building. Or else, given a change of numbering, the building next door at 1227, now a R.I. Registry of Motor Vehicles facility, looks like it could have been have been a theatre at one time.
Here are two photos of the Westminster/Bijou, a.k.a. “The Sink.”
ENTRANCE (expand image for clearer resolution)
INTERIOR – stage area being readied for demolition.
The interior, though very large, was extremely barren and plain, like an immense barn. It had no charm. The theatre was unable to successfully book major Hollywood films in first-run, and they all went to the Albee, Loew’s State, the Strand, and the Majestic. Some success was seen with touring Broadway shows, symphony concerts, operatic performances, but there were times when the place remained dark for some time between engagements. Roger Brett talks about this theatre extensively in his book Temples of Illusion. In fact he had worked here as a young stage hand for a time. The theatre was the failed brain child of Jacob Conn, who also built the Olympia Theatre in the Olneyville district of the city. The Metropolitan opened in 1932, closed in 1954, was demolished in 1961.
Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan premiered in Providence at this enormous house in March of 1949. That’s the kind of film that would normally have opened at the art-house Avon. It must have done reasonably well, because it appeared here and there at various second run theatres, even drive-ins. The Providence Journal review by Bradford F. Swan was ecstatic.
By some kind of mysterious confluence, Rossellini’s Europe ‘51, under the title of The Greatest Love, would play here in April of 1955. Although it starred Ingrid Bergman, you can be sure this ahead-of-its-time mystical-visionary piece was met with antipathy and snores.
In May of 1950, they had shown Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan. A neo-realist masterpiece is not what one would associate with a drive-in.
In late April of 1949 this theatre was showing the Roberto Rossellini war-in-Italy film Paisan, which had premiered at the Metropolitan a month before. The theatre was then known as the Victory. The other theatre known as the Victory for a time was Low’s-Keith’s-Victory-Empire, which had closed a year before and had been located at 260 Westminster Street.
In his book Federal Hill for the “Images of America” series, Joe Fuoco notes, “Federal Hill had a picture theatre in the 1920s called Teatro La Serena. Located on Atwells Avenue, it was the scene of much laughter and many tears over the years.”
There is a photo of a 1921 flyer in Italian advertising a live variety show there that was a fund-raiser for the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti.
In November of 1946, when this theatre was called the Empire, one of the films shown in second-run was Roberto Rossellini’s Open City, which had played to great acclaim at the East Side’s Avon Cinema two months earlier. It was about as different a kind of program as had ever played here, theatrical or cinematic. It was paired, incongruously, with the Bob Steele Cinecolor B-Western Northwest Trail. In eighteen months the theatre would be gone.
The Union Theatre was built in 1911 by Charles Allen, who had had some success in recent years with the Scenic Temple on Mathewson Street. He would later be responsible for the great building fiasco of the Hippodrome, which was never fully completed but which opened anyway in 1915 and closed for good a year later. In his volume Temples of Illusion Roger Brett gives a short history of the Union Theatre, later know as Fays. (never with an apostrophe, by the way.) Here it in, in synthesis:
“It was nothing unusual either in looks or size and the original 2159 seats were crowded. The stucco exterior and plaster interior walls were equally plain. Green was apparently one of Allen’s favorite colors and the Union’s curtain and grand drape were of this hue. Ed Fay must have had similar tastes because green remained the predominant color of the theater’s decor throughout his ownership too.
“From the very first day, the Union played six acts of vaudeville, four or five short movies, and illustrated songs. The shows were as unspectacular as the house itself, but with a low overhead, they made money. (…)
“Ed Fay, through his Arcadia Amusement Company, bought…Allen’s Union Theater. By then it was no longer playing vaudeville.
“Fay continued the movie policy, originally renaming the theatre Fays Photoplays, and it opened with this euphonious appellation on November 17, 1916. Ed soon changed to a more down-to-earth sounding Fays Theater, but didn’t book the vaudeville he later became famous for until the season of 1917-18….
“Fays always looked a little too much like a side street vaudeville house, which, of course, it was…
“Fays continued with plain old-fashioned vaudeville: jugglers, singers, acrobatic dancers, and comedians, year after year, but beginning in 1931, bookings were eliminated in the summer months.
“In April, 1947, Fay, in an interview published by the Providence Journal said, regarding television: ‘I don’t think it will compete with the movies or with radio in the home. Commercially, I can’t see it at all. It’s all right for a championship prize fight or a football game, but that’s about all. I can’t see it.’
“Badly mauled at the boxoffice by a medium [television] relying heavily on vaudeville acts, Fays Theatre was the first to give up the ghost. Fays, the last old-style vaudeville house in the nation, went dark in the spring of 1951 and was demolished that summer.”
Two photos of Fays:
OUTSIDE
INSIDE
In fact the buildings in the area all seem to be ancillary medical facilities associated with the hospital. The residential character of the neighborhood has all but vanished, although the theatre itself had to have disappeared eons ago. This may have been South Providence’s only movie theatre ever. The Liberty Theatre/Art Cinema sits in the Elmwood district, on the fringes of South Providence. South Providence, incidentally, is a neighborhood of Providence, not a separate entity as with North Providence or East Providence. There is no such place known as West Providence. South Providence was home to lower working class rsidents, often Irish immigrants in the early decades of the 20th Century. Afro-Americans and Latinos predominate in the area now.
The Gaiety opened on September 14, 1914. The Providence Journal reported the event:
“A most attractive little house is the Gaiety, simple in its interior design, yet having sufficient character to make it seem cosy and homelike. The walls of both balcony and orchestra floors are tinged a warm cream color and the proscenium opening is in gold and white. Tapestry hangings at either side relieve the bareness of the walls. The entire house is built of brick, steel, and cement. (…) The audience broke out in applause as the pianist took his seat and the first picture was flashed on the screen.”
Roger Brett in his book Temples of Illusion remarked:
“The Gaiety had no real stage, but unlike earlier movie houses which had been converted from existing buildings, it was a true theater. While much smaller than the other theaters erected at this time and having only 700 seats, it did boast of a balcony. Built and owned by Ottenburg and Kahan, managed by Tom Soriero, it exhibited movies pure and simple; no vaudeville acts, not even illustrated songs.”
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
“The gaudy old house that had opened as the Westminster Musée and Menagerie with variety acts, animals, and freaks on display in 1886, and had become known as the Sink, the city’s most famous burlesque house, made way for a parking lot.
“In their last years when they were known as the Empire and the Bijou, the two houses had shown second-run and reissued films, usually with no more than a handful of old derelicts in attendance. Unlike today, there was no great interest in old movies and it is doubtful that more than a few dozen classic film fans like myself went in these theaters for any other reason than to escape the cold or to sleep. However, it was in the Empire (née Keith’s) that I was first introduced to the Little Caesar of Edward G. Robinson, and The Prisoner of Zenda of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Ronald Colman. And it was at the Bijou (née Westminster and Sink) that I was exposed to Eddie Cantor and a bevy of platinum blondes in The Kid from Spain, and to Boris Karloff in the original Frankenstein of 1931. Now, it was no longer possible for a downtown movie theatre to pay its own way if it were anything less than first run, and so, down they came.”
The end comes for two venerable theatres Providence theatres: Keith’s and the Westminster. The following elegy was written by Roger Brett in his 1976 book Temples of Illusion, a history of downtown Providence theatres:
“In the late spring of 1948, the grand old theater of Westminster Street was torn down to provide space for a store. This was the theater built in 1878 as Low’s Opera House; renamed Keith’s Opera House and then Keith’s Theater. It was the house (…) whose stage had held the brightest stars of Keith vaudeville’s most brilliant day.
“Late in 1949, as winter close in once more, the next oldest theatre in the city got the crowbar and wrecking ball treatment.
“The gaudy old house that had opened as the Westminster Musée and Menagerie with variety acts, animals, and freaks on display in 1886, and had become known as the Sink, the city’s most famous burlesque house, made way for a parking lot.
“In their last years when they were known as the Empire and the Bijou, the two houses had shown second-run and reissued films, usually with no more than a handful of old derelicts in attendance. Unlike today, there was no great interest in old movies and it is doubtful that more than a few dozen classic film fans like myself went in these theaters for any other reason than to escape the cold or to sleep. However, it was in the Empire (née Keith’s) that I was first introduced to the Little Caesar of Edward G. Robinson, and The Prisoner of Zenda of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Ronald Colman. And it was at the Bijou (née Westminster and Sink) that I was exposed to Eddie Cantor and a bevy of platinum blondes in The Kid from Spain, and to Boris Karloff in the original Frankenstein of 1931. Now, it was no longer possible for a downtown movie theatre to pay its own way if it were anything less than first run, and so, down they came.”