Exeter Street Theatre

After it closed, it became a Conran's Furniture store for awhile. When that closed, Waterstone's moved in. And after Waterstone's closed, a worthless dot-com called "idealab!" occupied it for awhile. That's now gone as well, and this beautiful building stands empty, perhaps awaiting a better economy.

The Exeter Theatre was located at 26 Exeter Street and it seated 1300 people.

There is currently a "Retail Space For Lease" sign on the front door.

An article about the theatre, written in its "idealab!" days....

http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id2006/pg1/

A wonderful theatre with enormous character and unique ambience. You felt like you were in some kind of Tudor manor or English country church there, not surprising considering its origin as the First Spiritual Temple. It had similarities with New York's Plaza Theatre on 58th Street. Even the newspaper ads were always submitted in a period lettering style and format. My first film seen here was Bergman's WILD STRAWBERRIES in the summer of 1959. The last one was a revival of Visconti's integral THE LEOPARD around 1984. The place was the complete opposite of so many nondescript and boringly interchangeable places we watch movies in today. A lost treasure for sure.

ROCKY HORROR played weekly here-certainly enough room for the
usual audience participation characters and flying "props"
to roam

In the 1970s this was part of a small art-house chain called "Sonny & Eddy's Theatres" which also ran the Allston Cinema, Central Square Cinemas, Galeria Cinema (which a later owner renamed to "Janus Cinema"), and Academy Twin Cinemas in Newton.

Sadly, the Sack Copley Place multiplex -- a block away, and the antithesis of this place -- put them out of business.

The Exeter Street Theatre showed its last movie on Sunday, July 15, 1984, according to a Boston Globe article published three days later. The Globe article did not give the name of that movie.

Viola Berlin, longtime manager and booker, was a familiar face to all who patronized the Exeter Street Theatre. She frequently took over box office duties. And how many other theaters showed the annual newsreels of the Farnborough Air Shows in Great Britain as short subjects to accompany her frequently British features? And how many other managers regularly accompanied the stars of their films for guest appearances to local television stations? I recall her introducing Peter Sellers to us (at WGBH-TV). He was every bit as mysterious in personality as Geoffrey Rush portrayed him in the HBO movie... and as bland as Chauncey Gardener in "Being There."

The building is still vacant with 'For Lease' signs on the front doors.
I believe it has now been empty for four years!

Hate to say it, but... condominiums, anyone? Seems like, within the context of the neighborhood, a logical fit.

From Boston Business Journal, February 11, 2005:

The Kinsgley Montessori School in Boston's Back Bay is moving into the historic Exeter Street Theatre building on the corner of Exeter and Newbury streets.

The school, which operates in the former Saltonstall Mansion at 30 Fairfield St., will expand into 23,000 square feet of space on the first three floors of the former theater. Previously the space has housed Conran's furniture store and Waterstone's Booksellers.

In the Exeter Street building the school will teach grades one through six, while the preschool program will remain on Fairfield Street. The school will also add a toddler classroom for children 2 years old in September at the original location.

Kingsley expects to have the new space designed and completed by September, Head of School Renee DuChainey-Farkes said in a statement. The space will include classrooms, library facilities, a science lab, performing and visual arts studios, a language space, after-school program space and meeting space.

Here's the Kingsley Montessori School web site. It doesn't say much, but it does announce the school's "expansion for Fall 2005" into the "former Exeter Street Theatre building".

I hope they'll have an open house, as I'd love to see how they reuse the space. Many Bostonians have fond memories of this building, not just as a theatre but also later as Waterstone's bookstore.

A Kingsley Montessori banner now hangs in the street-level lobby, but the glass front doors still have For Lease signs on them. I don't know why they haven't been taken down.

Conran's Habitat store opened here in November, 1985. While it was open, it had a large lighted "CONRAN'S AT EXETER" sign outside, in the same style as the old lighted "EXETER STREET THEATRE" sign.

Waterstone's replaced Conran's in October 1991. At the time, it was called "New England's first book superstore", second in size only to the Boston University Bookstore (which, incidentally, had replaced the Kenmore Square Cinema). Sadly, Waterstone's closed in June 1999. It is still missed.

idealab! moved into the building in 2000, but closed its office there in July 2003.

Elvira Madigan must've played here for at least a couple of years in the 60s. This place always had that mystrerious air about with the rumored seances held within. Anyone ever attend one of these spiritual events?

The Exeter did have a commercial side too. I caught The Muppet Movie there first run, a big surprise hit which is why it likely did not play Sack houses.
Also it hosted the original run of Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Again another BIG surprise hit.
It was a theatre you could become lost in, seemed to have many levels and many alcoves and balconies & boxes none of which were closed off.

What a loss this theater is to those of us who appreciate movie treasures. Having lived in Boston from Sept. 1959 to Aug. 1960 I recall "The Mouse That Roared" played there for the whole time.

Another long run at the Exeter was the French film "Cousin, Cousine" that ran for months in the mid-70s.

The Exeter was a wonderfully unique space with great charm and atmosphere.

Interior photo:
http://www.esteyorgan.com/Opus1495.html

I recall seeing Lina Wertmuller's "Swept Away" in either autumn 1975 or early 1976 during my Freshman year at nearby Emerson College. A superb film at an equally fascinating theater: typically Boston Back Bay, in my view.

A crime that it became a Conran's!

According to Donald C. King's new book The Theatres of Boston: A Stage and Screen History, the Exeter opened as a theatre on May 4, 1914. It originally played second-run films with three acts of vaudeville, but eventually became strictly a movie house. It had 830 seats on the main floor and 436 in the balcony.

The Kingsley Montessori School has begun advertising this new location in neighborhood newspapers. So it's time to change the Function to "School".

Some important Italian neo-realist films opened here, including Rossellini's Paisan and Germany Year Zero as well as Outcry (Il sole sorge ancora) by Aldo Vergano in 1949-1950.

Here is a photo of the Exeter Street Theater.

It was an "upstairs" house, reached by broad wood staircases from the lobby on Exeter St. I went there a few times, starting in the late-1950s. It was definitely Up-scale and was an art-house specializing in British and other foreign films, or any type of film for a discerning audience. Clarence Blackall was the architect and he adapted it within the 1884 First Spiritual Temple. The Temple members continued to meet in the theatre for years afterward. It opened on May 4, 1914 with 1376 seats and was a nabe film & vaude house at first. I recall as a kid circa 1948 that its newspaper ads featured a huge "E" at the left side of the ad, and that they presented many of the post-war British film hits. The MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for this house has a photo dated May 1941. The Report states that the house has been a MGM customer for over 10 years, that it is in Good condition; and that it has 830 seats in the orchestra; and 436 seats in the balcony, total: 1266.
It was a single-screen house to the end, in July 1984.

The theatre is visible on this 1895 map of Back Bay.

It is labelled "FIRST SPIRITUAL TEMPLE" at the corner of Newbury and Exeter streets, near the bottom left corner of the map.

On this 1928 map, the same building is labelled "EXETER STREET THEATRE" in large letters, and "1ST SPIRITUAL TEMPLE" in smaller letters underneath. It's near the bottom right corner of the map.

Today's Boston Herald has an article about Dave Waller, who collects large signs that belonged to now-defunct Boston businesses.

The story includes a picture of him standing in front of the Exeter Street Theatre's sign, and holding another sign from the Old Howard Athenaeum.

I've seen an exhibit of Dave's collection at The Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington a couple of years ago. It was all about the history of neon signs, and Dave's got most of the iconic ones (such as the Naked-i, wich was NOT on display.)

I have a history with this theatre - I worked there from 1977-1981, when I was in college. It was a art house then, but was having trouble getting bookings. Some of the movies I remember from my days there were "Interiors", "The Last Wave", "The Tin Drum" and "Querelle".
What kept the theatre going in my time was the midnight showings of "The Rocky Horror Show". The rental deal was made before the film was a cult hit, so the theatre was able to keep a good perentage of the take. (When the print wore out and 20th Century Fox provided a new one, a new deal was struck and it wasn't as lucrative).
It was a beautiful theatre, with stained glass windows in the lobby.
We found a room behind the screen with boxes and boxes of stills, pressbooks, posters and programs - mostly from the 1950's. Most of them were British films - Olivier, Michal Powell, "Carry On" comedies and Michael Powell films

Because of its central location in the elegant Back Bay neighborhood, this theater was able to attract sophisticated audiences for many years. People could easily walk to it from many points or take the Green Line subway to the Copley Place station on Boylston Street. It did indeed show many British and foreign-language films. On one of their early dates together, my parents came here in 1948 or soon after to see the British film, "I Know Where I'm Going," starring Wendy Hiller. They always told me (much later, of course) that the theater was packed that night and the audience loved the picture, which had nice location photography in Scotland. Eventually I saw that movie on TV and could easily see why they liked it. When I was a B.U. student in the 1970's, I came here a few times. I remember seeing a rare re-release of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (a made-in-Hollywood classic) at a time when you could not rent those old movies on a VCR or DVD. It is a shame that a cinema like this could not survive in such a vibrant and upscale part of Boston.

For many decades the Exeter Street Theatre published and printed displays and newspaper ads in its own special and idiosyncratic lettering style and format. HERE is an example, from the 1961 run of General della Rovere.

For reasons I've forgotten, I was always intrigued by the name Exeter Street Theatre when I was keeping track of Variety's reported grosses for Boston moviehouses.
When I visited a Boston friend in 1972, we saw one or two of the latest releases in the heart of Boston ("Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" was one), and somehow the subject of visiting the Exeter came up.
It happened to be playing a revival of Ozu's "Tokyo Story" (1953), which I loved. But mainly I was struck by the uniqueness of the theater, which informed the experience of watching "Tokyo Story."
I'm sorry to learn the theater had difficulty getting major bookings and that it long ago stopped serving the filmgoing community.
The sheer capacity (a whopping 1,300 seats) must have made the theater difficult to maintain in terms of utilities, et al, and it may have had a weekly nut (operating expenses) greater than most distributors were willing to allow for.
Also, art house distributors tend to favor long runs in more intimate houses. Protracted engagements of "The Mouse That Roared" and "Cousin, Cousine" notwithstanding, I'm guessing most movies burned out too quickly at the large Exeter Street.

The theater's ad in the Boston Globe of Dec. 24, 1921 is headed simply "Exeter Theatre" and not "Exeter Street" which was the name in the 1940s and later. Their ad states that shows are continuous from 215PM to 1030PM, and that there was a change of shows on Thursdays (double features Mon-Wed; and then another pair Thurs-Sat.) On Sundays from 730PM there was a program of "Select Photoplays and Music".

I can still remember the pleasantly musty scent of this great old theatre during its heyday. Right or wrong my memory is that they competed with the Kenmore for British comedies - early Peter Sellers (I'm All Right Jack, The Mouse That Roared) and the great Terry-Thomas in "School for Scoundrels" the most memorable of all. I can still hear T-T repeatedly shouting out "Haaaard Cheese!" every time he outdid his victim, played by Ian Carmichael.

Most notably, the Exeter frequently foisted those god-awful moving abstract painting shorts with harpsuchord music before the feature. Believe me they were even more annoying than Mel Brooks made them out to be in his Oscar-winning short "The Critic" in 1963. (See my posting for the Astor for more on that brilliant little 3 1/2 minute film - it was shown all over the land before each screening of "Dr. Strangelove".)

What a beautiful old theatre the Exeter was, inside as well as out. I remember seeing Chariots of Fire, A Wedding, and a CSNY concert movie in that exeter, plus some others. I miss that theatre.

In Boston in the 70's there was a series of films shown on local TV, hosted by Frank Avurush (who also had been the Boston TV Bozo if I remember correctly), where he would show 1 movie Saturday night and 2 on Sunday, all with the same theme or star, and he would talk about them. One night I was at the Exeter with friends seeing Seven Beauties (I think), it was really crowded, and Frank and film crew show up to shoot the line and crowd and got us buying our tickets at the box office which became the new showopen for his series.

Renewing link.

Here is a 1983 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cp5lss

1963 Photo

The August, 1984, issue of Boxoffice Magazine says that the Exeter Theatre was designed by architect Clarence H. Blackall.

simply a wonderful place to see a movie..its intriguing, majestic, ornate charm only added to the movie-goers experience...

"Let's do the time warp again."