Community Theatre
13 Waterman Avenue,
North Providence,
RI
02911
13 Waterman Avenue,
North Providence,
RI
02911
1 person
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Trahan's Theatre, Hillside Cinema
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This theatre in North Providence’s Centredale section was for many decades the only theatre in the town. It opened in 1923 as Trahan’s Theatre. It was renamed Community Theatre on September 5, 1931. At the end of its career it was the Hillside Cinema…and was showing weekly programs of Italian films of the popular ethnic type. It was closed in February 1974.
It suffered damage from a fire and was demolished in 1976.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 16 comments)
The Providence Evening Tribune of September 1, 1923 has an ad including a Centredale exhibitor called Centredale Worsted Mills as being part of Paramount Week with a showing of the film Moran of the Lady Letty. Could that have been the same place as the Casino or Strand in Centredale? Or were those two, both listed elsewhere with a Smith Street address, actually the same place? Or was this merely a mill showing for workers and their families? Perhaps even at the Community Theatre? Perhaps someone can straighten out the history of film exhibition in Centredale.
PARAMOUNT WEEK AD
Trahan’s Theatre (not “Trahon”) becomes the Community after refurbishing. Ad announcing opening on September 5, 1931:
NEWSPAPER AD
Newspaper article reporting the opening, from Providence County Times, September 4, 1931:
ARTICLE
I am working on a new post to “blog” based on my mother’s letters home to Germany in 1934. She mentions seeing “Women in Uniform” and laments that it was “[not] especially great,” saying, “Maybe I did not understand the English well enough.” Oddly your post is the only reference I have to an English version other than some subtitled or much later remakes. If you have
I won’t post that letter until August 6, but the blog, “Trudel’s Truth” with her earlier letters is at http://wp.me/1yA95
The letters are at Trudel’s Truth. My mother makes numerous references to movies she saw during the period and I am trying to link to YouTubes or other info about each one.
around 1976, when my friend Todd and I were 9, we rode our bikes down to this theater as it had just been demolished, we climbed the hill behind it and snuck into the rubble and threw seats around at each other…I remember it being a pile of broken cement and theatre seats, and felt bad because I loved movies as a kid. it was right by the post office on the short part of Smith where it meets Waterman Avenue. I think it was replaced by a parking lot….
A Facebook friend of mine wrote: “I grew up on Redfern St. off Woonasquatucket Ave. and spent many days hiking through Centredale on the way to the railroad tracks. One of the ushers at the theater was a short, grizzly man we called Fourgee. We climbed the “cliffs” behind the theater many a time.” –RP
A Facebook user wrote: “I have fond memories of spending Saturday afternoon at the Community theater, hula hoop contests and an older man with a bald head walking up and down the isle making sure kids stayed in there seats. I don’t remember there being any parents, just a maze of kids having fun.”
Reopened as Community on September 5th, 1931. Grand opening ad posted.
The theatre was demolished in 1976.
Cinema Italia [in Johnston]continued to entertain the Italian American community until February of 1974, at which time the strip of stores was razed and the property sold. Undaunted, [Rolando] Petrella moved his cinema operation to the Hillside Cinema on Waterman Avenue in North Providence, offering Italian films during the same time slots as his defunct Cinema Italia.“ —from "The Voices of Italy” by Alfred R. Crudale.