Wang Theatre

The Grand Museum and Grand Opera House are both on this 1895 map, on the east side of Washington Street just south of Dover Street.

The corresponding 1928 map no longer shows a theatre at the Grand Museum site, but still shows the Grand Opera House a few buildings to the south.

If anyone can definitively demonstrate that either of these theatres ever showed movies, I’ll be happy to add them to CinemaTreasures. (Ditto for the Castle Square/Arlington, Hollis Street, Colonial, Wilbur, and Shubert.)

The Hub Theatre was at the southeast corner of Washington and Dover streets. It was a rectangular building with the short end on Washington and the long left side on Dover Street. It originally was a market, Williams market. Then a hall was installed upstairs, which eventually became a theatre, then later the entire building was adapted as a theatre. Names were Williams, Hooley’s, Novelty, Windsor, Grand Museum, Grand Theatre and Hub Theatre. It reopened as the Hub Theatre on August 17, 1903, under managment of Stair and Wilbur. Early movies were shown there when it was still the Grand, according to Joe Cifre. He claims that the Grand was the first regular theatre in Boston to offer a show consisting 100% of films. I have seen photos where, if you know where to look, at least part of the Hub Th. can be seen – recent books by Arcadia Publ., maybe their South End book and/or their Orange Line book. (The Orange Line and the Dover el station were right in front of the Hub.)

Yes, Tom N, if you lived in the South End and didn’t care for what was playing at the Met (Wang), Wilbur, Shubert, or Hollis, you could head for the Castle Square/ Arlington, the National, Columbia, Apollo, Cobb, Grand Opera House, Hub, Puritan, and even our mysterious Lafayette. Have I left any out??

We have, at the Somerville Theatre, a newspaper article noting that Busby Berkeley was leaving the Arlington Theatre on Arlington street for the Somerville Players, and mentioning his successful presentation of musical comdies at the Arlington.

I doubt it, since the ‘Lafayette Theatre’ shown on this map is quite a large structure, taking up half of a city block.

Also shown on the same 1928 map is the ‘Arlington Theatre’, at the corner of Arlington, Chandler, and Tremont streets. It was previously called the Castle Square Theatre. I have not added it to CinemaTreasures because I don’t know if it ever showed movies. The Boston Athenaeum says it was razed in 1932.

And now a question, for Ron Salters or anyone else:

This 1928 map shows a large building labelled ‘Lafayette Theatre’, on the east side of Tremont Street just south of Broadway, two blocks from the Wang (Metropolitan) Theatre. It is near the top left corner of the map.

I’ve never heard of this theatre, and have found no references to it in various histories of movie or stage theatres in Boston. Any information on it would be appreciated.

When the Wang began its Monday night movie classics series, I believe that they referred to their screen as “the largest in New England”. A rather ominous note was sounded during the 2005 movie season when they dropped admissions and made the showings free.

I think that Jess Cain is still among us— in addition to his radio work, he was also an occasional actor in local productions. As for the old Metropolitan, one aspect of it that I liked was that if you went into the theatre when it opened about 9AM on a sunny morning, the huge inner foyer was flooded with sunlight coming from the windows on the south wall. Outside of that wall there is a fine decorated facade which nobody ever sees because it’s now out of the way. The alley there was formerly Hollis Street, which ran down to Washington. Diagonally across from that facade when the Met was new was the Hollis St. Theatre, one of Boston’s legit houses. There were no buildings across from the east wall of the Met, or few buildings, so that you could get a good look at it, unlike today. And there was a narrow street which ran in back of the stage and alonside the north wall of the Wilbur Theatre. In other words, the Met’s rear stage wall was even with the north sidewall of the Wilbur, so you can see that the Met stage was not very deep. I saw the Metropolitan Opera on tour from NY at the Met in April 1958. Their scenary was in tents and trailers outside the theatre. The opera was there because the old Boston Opera House on Huntington Ave had been demolished in Jan-Feb. 1958. I went there during the summer of 1962 after it had been renamed Music Hall by Ben Sack, and the show was an excercise in 1929-era nostalgia, with the organ operating and a mini-revue on stage in addition to the movie. The organ was removed to a private collector sometime in the 1970s, I believe. The house seats about 3600 today. The ring of loges around the orchestra floor is not original and were installed during the 1990-era renovations.

Great Stuff, Bill! I have a couple of old Playbills for Camelot at the Saxon and Sound of Music at the Gary – the old ads are funny as well in these. The Statler is now the Park Plaza Hotel.

Here’s a Playbill for “Lizpatra” at the Wang Center, aka Music Hall, in July ’63.

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Though my NYC origins should have dictated that I’d see the film at Manhattan’s Rivoli Theater, the elevated price scale and the difficulty of getting reserved seats there prompted me and a friend to see it in Boston. As a college student at the time, I had a network of undergrad pals in Bean Town, so we used our contacts there to get tickets and crash-out overnight. It proved surprisingly easy: if I remember correctly, we bought the tickets on the day of performance (the Rivoli required a wait of several weeks). The size of the theater no doubt allowed for the availability of seats even in the cheap sections at peak times.

I remember that the film’s presentation was superbâ€"grander and more impressive than it would have been at the smaller Rivoli. The orchestral overture thundered through the huge house, and as the lights dimmed, the sweeping curtains parted majestically on the Fox logo. Splendid. Though the film was laughable, right down to Hermes Pan’s crowd-scene choreography, we enjoyed it immensely, even as we began to nod off around midnight with almost an hour of the nonsense left to go.

The ads in this program are a thrill in themselves. I thought you’d especially like the one of features at other Sack theaters. But my favorite notice comes on the title page with the “Thirsty Pilgrim” at the Statler Hilton, “serving light lunches for men only.” Boston famously offered such places at the time, from the sublime Locke-Ober to ridiculous street-corner bars. For each one, so many hungry women. When my aunt had lived in the area a decade or so earlier, many (all?) local taverns allowed women to enter only when accompanied by men. On family visits, I remember playing with my cousin outside drinking spots while my grandfather escorted my mom and her sister inside for a highball or two. Fathers debauching daughters! Children left to their own devices! And all in the name of propriety! But who could complain when the Music Hall was showing “Cleopatra.”

The THEATRES OF BOSTON mentioned above this post, can be obtained at a discount through the Theatre Historical Society via the link on the front page of their web site: www.historictheatres.org for a limited time, so don’t delay!

Recent color photos of this theatre can be found on the site: “America’s Stunning Theatres” by photographer and stagehand Noah Kern at: http://www.pbase.com/affablebeef/theatres Comments and information may be left there without registration; such can be public view or only to Mr. Kern. Scroll down the page to find the name, and then click on the sample image above it to be taken to the page of photos of it.

A picture postcard of the Metropolitan, described here. It was made some time between 1925 and 1930.

A 1930 night photo, described here, showing the Majestic’s marquee and the Metropolitan’s vertical sign.

A 1947 photo, described here. You can’t see the marquee or the entrance, but you can see the vertical sign.