Bijou Theatre
545 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02124
545 Washington Street,
Boston,
MA
02124
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The Bijou Theatre opened on December 11, 1882 as a “Parlor Opera House” featuring Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Iolanthe”.
It was located on the second floor of an annex to the next-door Adams House hotel. It replaced an earlier theatre in the same building that at various times was called the Lion, the Mechanics Institute, the Melodeon Varieties, the New Melodeon, and the Gaiety.
B.F. Keith took over the Bijou in 1886 and began to stage vaudeville shows there. Later he converted it to show movies and renamed it the Bijou Dream. At one point it was also called the Intown.
The Bijou continued operating into the 1940s, but after the horrific Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire of 1942, Boston enacted stricter fire laws that doomed the Bijou. Its exits led not to the street but rather to two neighboring theatres, the old BF Keith Theatre (later called the Normandie and the Laffmovie) and the newer Keith Memorial (much later called the Savoy and the Opera House).
Eventually the Bijou was razed to the orchestra and stage floors, which became the roof of the stores below.
Until a few years ago, the former Bijou entrance was a storefront containing a pinball and video amusements arcade.
Most of what remained of the Bijou building was demolished in 2008, leaving only its front facade standing. Emerson College is redeveloping the Bijou property, along with the adjoining Paramount Theatre, into a new theatre and dormitory complex.
(The above information comes from Donald C. King’s “A Historical Survey of the Theatres of Boston”, published in the Third Quarter 1974 issue of Marquee, the journal of the Theatre Historical Society.)
Contributed by
Ron Newman
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Recent comments (view all 31 comments)
I visited the site today, both the rear (Mason St.) and the front, where there is a handy little window on the sidewalk for interested passersby. Everything is gone except for the facade. For the past many years it has been possible to see the outline of the sloping balcony of the Bijou on the south sidewall of the Opera House. Because of the demolition, you can now also see the sloping outline of the orchestra floor. As the new building progresses upward, these 2 outlines will no longer be visible.
I want to thank Ron Newman and others for the updates on the Bijou. I am currently updating Boston theater histories accompanying the Boston Athenaeum’s theater program database and will, of course, give credit where it is due.
In his lengthy article “Saga of the Movie Industry in Boston”, which I estimate was written about 1950, Boston film pioneer Joe Cifre says that when B.F. Keith renovated his Bijou and renamed it the Bijou Dream, there was a tiny projecton booth which had a unique turntable on which were mounted 2 projectors back to back. He says “When one machine was in operation facing the screen, the other, which was facing in the opposite direction, would be readied for use; at the end of the reel the turntable would be given a half-turn and the second projector would come into play.”
A restaurant called Bijou will open this fall at 51 Stuart Street. Stuff Magazine and Zagat both report that the name was inspired by the former Bijou Theatre a few blocks away, because it was “the first in the country to be equipped with an electrical lighting system”.
The Boston Herald today quotes the operator of the new Bijou restaurant and night club opening in Oct on Stuart Street as saying “I wanted to hit on something that really had a history in Boston. ‘Bijou’ really stuck out because it was the first theater in the country to have electricity, and nightclubs are all about lighting, sound and electricity.” The Bijou’s electrical system was installed by Thomas Edison himself and was touted at the time as the first 100% electric theater operation in the USA. I don’t how valid that claim is. Certainly it was one of the very first.
Emerson College’s newly opened Paramount Center contains a Black Box Theatre and a Bright Family Screening Room (for movies), both built within the footprint of the old Bijou. The Paramount’s lobby areas contain wall exhibits that pay extensive tribute to the Bijou.
In the balcony foyer of Emerson’s new Paramount there is a huge color rendering of the interior of the Bijou Theatre on opening night in 1882 with G&S' “Iolanthe” on stage. The original print is in the Harvard Theatre Collection and possibly in other libraries as well. The pespective is from the rear of the Bijou balcony looking toward the stage with a full house present.
The Bijou is listed as the Bijou Dream Theatre in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. Shown as having 800 seats.
The 1918 Boston street directory lists the Bijou Dream Theatre at 545 Washington St., Keith’s Theatre at 547 Washington, and the Boston Theatre at 539 Washington St.
This theatre is mapped on the wrong Washington Street (in Dorchester, instead of downtown Boston), far away from where it belongs.