Photoplay Theatre
65 Park Street,
Adams,
MA
01220
65 Park Street,
Adams,
MA
01220
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Additional Info
Functions: Office Space
Styles: Colonial Revival, Romanesque Revival
Nearby Theaters
Located at the corner of Park Street and School Street. Built as a Town Hall in 1883 in a Romanesque Revival style. The Photoplay Theatre was opened by January 1921. There is an Adams city directory advertisement for this theatre in 1929. It was still open in 1934, but had closed by 1935.
The building suffered dame from a fire in 1949 and repairs were carried out in a Colonial Revival style. The building has reverted back to its original use as local government office space.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 1 comments)
65 Park Street is a Colonial Revival building originally built in 1883 as a town hall to house local government offices, the District Court, the State Registrar of Deeds and an auditorium. The Registrar of Deeds still occupies the building, so its current use can be classified as State (or Government) Offices.
The structure originally had a peaked roof, but that and the original tower were destroyed by a 1949 fire. As peaked roofs are not a feature of Colonial Revival architecture, it was likely built in the Romanesque Revival style and the Colonial features added as part of the post-fire rebuilding. I’ve been unable to find a photo of the building dating from the era when it housed the theater.
The theater obviously must have occupied the auditorium, but I don’t know if that space is still intact. It might have been carved up for more office space. It was not unusual in the silent movie era for local governments to lease underutilized public auditoriums to theater operators to get a bit of extra revenue, but in later years the spaces were frequently just converted for other uses.
The most recent Sanborn map of Adams, from 1914, shows the Town Hall but doesn’t indicate a theater operating in the building. The moly movie house on the map was the old Atlas Theatre on the site of the later Adams Theatre. The Photoplay Theatre was in operation by 1921, when it was advertised in the January 11 issue of the local newspaper.