Newport’s Forgotten Cinema Palaces – Special – The Newport Daily News

Newport’s early theaters were elaborate entertainment palaces where “the show” began before the movie began.

As we snuggle up in our homes waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to pass, it is inevitable that we will look back on all the things we have missed in recent months. Even something as prosaic as a trip to the movies takes on special meaning when you’ve been denied it long enough.

While Newport County has only two functioning movie theaters these days – the Island Cinemas 10 and the one-screen Jane Pickens Theater and Event Center – at least 13 theaters have graced the county’s boulevards and roads. since the beginning of the last century. From golden palaces to flashy drive-ins, Newport movie theaters offered an experience for all types of spectators. Few are remembered today, their marquees have long faded, and their memories faded like the final sparkling image of the last reel.

Newport’s oldest movie theaters weren’t built for movies at all. The Jane Pickens began life in 1846 as the Mount Zion Episcopal Church and was not converted into a cinema until 1923 when it became The Strand. As the name suggests, the Opera House was built in 1864 to host performances, before being converted into a triplex in the 1950s. (It is currently being restored to its original glory as a elegant theater for live performances and movie exhibition.)

The first dedicated movie theaters in Newport did not appear until 1908. Like the previous buildings built for shows, these early theaters were built as entertainment palaces with ornate walls and ceilings, bright colors and sparkling crystal chandeliers. Remains of some of these early structures still exist, although most have been converted for other purposes, such as commercial or residential use. But the elaborate details that remain show that in theaters of this era, “the show” began before the film even began.

The first cinema, The Star, opened at 134 Thames St., and was quickly followed by others, turning Thames Street into something of a theater district at the time. The Empire was built around 1908 at the intersection of Thames and Gidley. It was one of the smaller cinemas in Newport and little is known about its history or fate. Completed in 1911 at 144 Thames St., the Colonial was a large 1,200-seat vaudeville and cinema. It still exists and is now a huge vacant space with a retail store built where the lower level entrance to the theater once stood.

The Bijou Theater was built around 1915 at 192 Thames, and proclaimed the price of a ticket (10 cents) directly on its marquee. Eventually, it was partially demolished and turned into a mixed-use building containing residential apartments above and shops on the ground floor.

Not to be overlooked, Jamestown came into action around 1920 with the opening of the Jamestown Theater (aka The Palace), a modest-looking brick complex located at 34 Narragansett Ave., near the Newport Jamestown ferry departure. After the construction of the Pell Bridge made it easier to get around Newport, the movie theater fell into disuse and was converted to commercial use in the 1970s.

With the invention of synchronized sound recording in the late 1920s, the “feature film” quickly became the dominant form of entertainment for the majority of Americans. These films served as a common cultural touchstone for the locals, as new films reached different corners of the country at around the same time.

To meet the demand for “talkies”, a grand new theater called Paramount was built in 1929 at 76 Broadway, across from City Hall. With an enormous seating capacity of 1,212 and a three-sided marquee ringed with hundreds of lights, its opening promised the citizens of Newport a “magnificent temple of fun” and a luxuriously furnished interior that was “scientifically cooled by refrigeration.” .

James Cole, who grew up in Newport in the 1950s and 1960s, and who collected and shared photographs of the city’s theaters, remembers seeing Disney movies regularly at Paramount as a child, and still has fond memories of its large size and its elegance. . Other memories are less romantic, like the plumes of cigarette smoke that crossed the interior during the screenings – a practice that seems unthinkable today.

Cole notes that one of the reasons the city was able to support so many theaters was that local Navy bases routinely transported hundreds of sailors by bus to cinemas, which helped offset the lack of parking around. these different buildings in downtown Newport.

As the northern parts of Aquidneck Island became more populated and cars became more common, new cinemas opened on the island. Portsmouth had its own movie theater in 1946 when the Island Cinema opened at 686 Park Ave. The modest block building only operated for a few decades and is currently in use as a boat storage facility.

The Middletown Vacation Cinema was built in 1955 at 105 Chase Lane. It has been renovated several times and, like Island Cinemas 10, is now Newport County’s only multiplex.

The 1950s brought drive-ins to Newport County, starting with the opening of Newport Family Drive-In in Middletown in 1954. Located at 1201 Aquidneck Ave. and with a capacity of 1,500 cars, it was originally operated by Harry Minassian and Daytz Theater Entertainments of Boston. In May 1979 it was renamed Starlight Twin Drive-In. Unfortunately it closed in the late 1980s and the property was demolished for redevelopment in 2003.

In 1957, Tiverton got its own “ozoner” with the opening of the Ponta DelGada Drive-In at 70 Shove St. The theater was named after the capital of the Azores and was intended to appeal to the Portuguese and Azorean community. in the neighboring fall River. It operated until 1982. A bar and restaurant were built on the site, but most of the old open car parks remain.

In the 1970s, single-screen cinemas were becoming less and less economically viable, ushering in the era of the multiplex. The departure of the Newport fleet in 1973 must also have had a profound impact on attendance at local films. Nonetheless, Middletown got a new twin movie theater with the opening of the Jerry Lewis Cinema in September 1972, just south of Stop & Shop at 1346 West Main Road.

Not the raffle it once was, Mr Lewis’ name was taken from the theater five months later when it was renamed Esquire Cinema I & II. Two years later it became the Starcase Twin Cinema, and two years later the name was again changed to Starcase Cinema I, II & III. The cinema finally succumbed to competition from the biggest Holiday Cinema in 2001.

With the proliferation of VHS, then DVDs and finally streaming services, people now have the ability to watch movies from the comfort of their own homes and on their own schedules. The shared experience of neighborhood cinema, so memorably evoked in the film Cinema Paradiso, is now a memory that is fading, accelerated by the current health crisis. Like the movies that once filled their screens, many of our old theaters no longer live except in our memories – lost gateways to exciting and wonderful worlds beyond our imaginations.