Bryn Mawr Theatre
1125 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue,
Chicago,
IL
60660
1125 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue,
Chicago,
IL
60660
10 people
favorited this theater
Opened in 1912, the Bryn Mawr Theatre is in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. It was just steps away from the Bryn Mawr Avenue "El" stop, so it was located in an area which received heavy foot (and also auto) traffic.
Renamed the New Bryn Mawr Theatre in the 1960’s, in the early-1980’s it was renamed Gar Wah Theatre, screening Chinese and mainstream Hollywood films. It operated until the mid-1980’s before closing.
Today, the former theatre serves as retail and storage use.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Recent comments (view all 53 comments)
Interesting Name… Its Welsh.. Bryn means Hill or mont Mawr means Big or Great… There must have been settlers from Wales…
“Bryn Mawr Avenue was named in the 1880s by Edgewater developer John Lewis Cochran after Bryn Mawr station on the Main Line north of Philadelphia.[2] Bryn Mawr is Welsh for Big Hill.”
A few other streets than run parallel to Bryn Mawr in that general area have suburban Philadelphia-connected names like Ardmore and Rosemont (and Devon, although the Pennsylvanians pronounce it differently). I think even Hollywood was once the name of an estate near the Main Line.
I loved going to this theatre in the 60’s
I managed the New Bryn Mawr theater in the early 80s.We had a mixture of customers from winthrop ave.to sheridan drive.We were always packed on the weekends and never had a problem in the theater.We did have security on the weekends but it was more for crowd control than anything else.I remember when we had E.T. the lines were around the corner to get in. The majority of our money was made from the concession stand and the rest from ticket sales.Our projectionist was making great pay as he was a union projectionist.When the theater was run as the Garwah theater they werent using a union projectionist and they had a fire in the auditorium.Hmm wonder how that happened.The theater,chairs, screen, projector, all had to be replaced or repaired and the theater was reopened under the name The New Bryn Mawr Theater.Those were great days for me and I have life long memories of the clientel, and staff that we had.
Griffey – can you give me a better idea of what the theatre was like? Ornate at all? How large was the balcony? Was there lots of plaster molding? Can’t find any photos – really want to know what this place was like!
I was never there, but the sanborn maps indicate no balcony.
warnergrad; I’ve been there a few times. An okay experience. Nothing really ornate. No balcony. Projection was half-way decent. Mono sound. It sort of looked like the Adelphi Theatre in Rogers Park. It’s now some type of warehouse.
Warmergrad ;Tim hit it right on the head. Actually the lobby was rather small. No balcony and the sound system was ok . We actually had to go to the alley side of the building and go under neath theater to turn marquee lights on and off until a timer was installed , which gives you an idea of the age of the building.
I went to the Bryn Mawr a number of times in the late ‘70s. It was essentially just a black box, but it was in decent shape and when the movie costs less than a round trip on the L, who can complain? In those days you could have a lot of fun in Chicago for not much money. From what I read, that has changed for the worse in recent times.