Circle Theatre
2105 Pennsylvania Avenue,
Washington,
DC
2105 Pennsylvania Avenue,
Washington,
DC
1 person
favorited this theater
The Circle’s Art Deco stylings were a bit tattered by the time it became a repertory house in the 70s and 80s showing double features with a matinee of only $1 (full price was $2).
Many homeless people found comfort in the not-so-comfortable chairs.
The screen was small, the house lights were dark, the deco trimmings were crumbling, but it was a popular haunt for older films.
The theater was adjacent to “The Inner Circle” which ran first and second run movies.
Both theaters were demolished in the early 1980s to make way for a parking garage.
Contributed by
Paul Schwartz
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Recent comments (view all 16 comments)
I don’t think the Inner Circle has been listed yet?
This was quite an early theater- built sometime in the ‘teens. In it’s early days it used a gimmick in keeping with it’s location near a traffic circle- films were projected through a circular mask, the management advertising “Perfect Circle Projection”.
When the Circle was still a regular neighborhood theatre in 1956, I took Mary Louise here to see Rogers & Hammerstein’s Carrousel. We started a kiss at the 20th Century-Fox drumroll and kept it up till the picture ended. Glad it was a 2 hour movie rather than the usual 90 minutes. Quite possibly the most enjoyable movie I never saw.
Built in 1911, the Circle was the oldest movie theater in DC until it was demolished in the late 1980s.
With all due respect to rivjr, there was many a matinee that was sparsely attended. Remember “WR Mysteries of the Organism”? Who showed up for that one?
That aside, it was a wonderful, funky place to see several different double features a week. And boy did I
Remember the clock, with its glowing blue face over the exit?
Sigh
The Circle was a great resource for film lovers, with an eclectic programming schedule that mixed classics with cult. Before VCRs and cable TV, venues like this were the only way to catch great films that may have had a limited local release. Miss those days!
I spent a major chunk of my youth in this theater. The nearby Biograph and AFI were more refined repertory houses, but the Circle has a certain rough charm about it. Maybe it was the large (and often vocal) homeless audience. Maybe it was the occasional out-of-sequence reel change by the projectionist. Maybe it was the fact that a double feature-sustaining Roy Rogers meal could always be snuck in with a minimum effort. Maybe it was the incredibly cheap tickets. Regardless, the Circle will always be missed by D.C. film fans who knew from the start that VHS was a poor substitute for a Circle Theater experience.
As a student at GW in the early seventies I’m pretty sure I spent more time at the Circle than I did in class…probably learned more too. Even now I look over at the abomination of a building that stands in its place and think about all those great film festivals (Bergman, Kurosawa, Trufeau, etc.)that I saw for a dollar. At their peak the Pedas owned many other Circle moviehouses in DC; the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle, Circle West End, etc. It was a great place to see a movie. How about the old DuPont, the Biograph, the Janus and the Cerberus? Wow, those were the days. Thank God the Uptown is still standing. When they junk that one, I’m going with it. – Mike Greene
Here is a circa 1930 photo of a Circle Theater in Washington, DC.
Great picture! Thanks. I had forgotten about the eatery next door…I wonder how many incarnations that had. And in the sixties there was a liquor store on the corner. Hey, what’s happened to all the liquor stores?
Really hurts to think that place is gone.