The Movie Palace and the Theatrical Sources of Its Architectural Style

Abstract

Research into the film industry has concentrated primarily on production. Where it has embraced exhibition, the emphasis has been almost exclusively economic. There have been few studies of the movie theater itself in terms of its architectural design and social function, as the place where the process begun by production is completed by consumption. In this article I will explore the architectural antecedents of the movie palace-vaudeville theater, traveling show, circus, penny arcade, dime museum, Kinetoscope parlor and store. My purpose is to determine how the architecture of these locales, and its relationship to the role and status of the film, contributed to an architectural style unique to the movies as seen later in the movie palace. The palace incorporated many of the functional and iconographic motifs of these earlier, more primitive exhibition contexts. Among those that I will examine here are the open or recessed exterior vestibule, the box office, the marquee, the poster and electric light display, the architectural design and decoration of both the exterior and the interior of the theater, and the added accoutrements and extra spaces of the interior.