Movie palace
First, the classical style movie palace, with its eclectic and luxurious period-revival architecture; second, the atmospheric theatre which has an auditorium ceiling that resembles an open sky as its defining feature and finally, the Art Deco theaters that became popular in the 1930s. Grand vaudeville theatres began to show motion pictures in the early 20th century, but the development of the feature film led to the development of dedicated movie theatres. Art Deco, High Gothic, Moroccan, Mediterranean, Spanish Gothic, Hindu, Babylonian, Aztec, Mayan, Orientalist, Italian Renaissance, and (after the discovery of King Tut s tomb in 1922) Egyptian Revival, were all variously mixed and matched.It was meant to create a fantasy environment to attract moviegoers and involved a type of social engineering, distraction, and traffic management, meant to work on human bodies and minds in a specific way. Lamb, and the impresario S.L.
The Mark Strand Theater in New York City, opened in 1913 by Mitchell Mark at the cost of one-million dollars, is usually cited as the first movie palace of the United States, and its success in drawing the upper middle class to the movies spurred others to follow suit. Many movie palace architects, like studio heads, were often first generation Americans, notably John Eberson, Thomas W. His first, of the five hundred in his career, was the 1923 Majestic in Houston, Texas.
Some of these theaters were ornamented to an extravagant extent, in an eclectic exoticism where a variety of referenced visual styles collided wildly with one another. The atmospherics usually conveyed the impression of sitting in an outdoor courtyard, surrounded by highly ornamented asymmetrical facades and exotic flora and fauna, underneath a dark blue canopy; when the lights went out, the Brenograph magic lantern machine would begin to project clouds, constellations, and special celestial effects and illusions on the ceiling. Lamb s style was initially based on the more straightforward, hardtop form patterned on opera houses, but was no less ornate.
Roxy Rothafel. This wealth of ornament was not merely for aesthetic effect.
Today, most of the surviving movie palaces operate as regular theaters, showcasing concerts, plays and operas. Palace Theatre, Louisville Chicago s Gateway Theatre s Solidarity Tower in Jefferson Park is a replica of the Royal Castle in Warsaw The landmark Chicago Theatre Interior and balcony of the Paramount Theatre in Seattle Broadway Theatre, Mount Pleasant, Michigan Loew s 175th St Theatre (now United Palace Theater), New York Paramount Theatre, Oakland, California Palace Theatre, Cleveland Ohio Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Illinois This is a list of selected movie palaces, with location and year of construction. . Other pioneers include the Chicago firm of Rapp and Rapp, which designed the Chicago Theatre, the Uptown, and the Oriental, and Sid Grauman, who built the first movie palace on the West Coast, Los Angeles Million Dollar Theater, in 1918. As their name implies, movie palaces, like other products of the age, were advertised to make the average citizen feel like royalty. While inscribed with democratic sayings and patriotic imagery, they consciously referenced the grandeur of aristocratic Europe and were often decorated in European fashion. Eberson specialized in the subgenre of atmospheric theatres.
A movie palace or picture palace (especially in the UK) is a term used to refer to the grand cinemas of the 1910s to early 1960s. There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed under the label movie palace.
