West End Cinema
75 Causeway Street,
Boston,
MA
02114
75 Causeway Street,
Boston,
MA
02114
2 people
favorited this theater
An old steeply-balconied theatre that became re-incarnated as an art house in the 1960’s, showing mostly new foreign films as well as revivals. It was located right near Boston Garden and North Station.
Contributed by
Gerald A. DeLuca
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Recent comments (view all 32 comments)
I wonder if it was actually built. The new (at the time) North Station dates to about 1927 or so. It had a long concourse, as Ian states, which went clear westward to the Manger (Madison) Hotel. I was in this station in the 1940s and especially the 1950s, often, and there was no movie theater there then. It probably would have been a “newsreel” theater, similar to the South Station Theatre. I have no memory of it, nor do I recall reading about it in any of the local “railfan” publications. I think that if there had been a little theater in there that it would have been mentioned in Donald King’s book (he passed through North Station often in the 1930s and 1940s.) As Ian says, when they removed about half of the tracks on the west side of the station circa-1960, the west half of the station concourse was removed also.
I’ve found a reference to a Massachusetts corporation called the North Station Theatre Company being dissolved in 1934. The fact that the company had existed doesn’t indicate that they ever actually got their theater open, of course, or that they didn’t. If they did get the place open, it might have continued operating under other management even after the original company was dissolved, or it might have just been closed down after only a year or two of operation.
The thing that most interested me about the Bridgemen’s magazine item was that the theater was to be designed by Funk & Wilcox. I was searching the Internet to see if there were any theaters the firm had designed in addition to the five currently attributed to them at Cinema Treasures, and the North Station project was the only one I found.
If the magazine’s report that the theater was to cost $150,000 was correct it would have been a fairly large building, if built at 1932 prices. The reported cost might have been a mistake, though. If it was to be only a small theater inside the station, maybe the cost was supposed to be $15,000. Those old magazines are full of typos.
Up until some time in the 1980s there was a very strange ‘North Station Cinema’ triplex, with two screens on one street and the third on a parallel street. (I think Friend and Portland streets?) All of the screens were porn theatres by the late 1970s, and I doubt they ever were anything else, but I could be wrong.
Funk & Wilcox were the architects of the entire Boston Garden/North Station complex (1928-1998).
The North Station cinemas which Ron Newman mentions were store-front operations, similar to ancient store-front nickleodeons of the 1905-era. They operated in the 1980 period. I went into one of them once and it was definitely a XXX venue.
The Boston & Maine RR Historical Society recently ran a long time-line of events in B&M history spread over a number of issues of its magazine. If it had mentioned a cinema being built within the North Station, I would have instantly noticed, that’s for sure!
Why was the architect’s name of this theatre changed to Funk & Wilcox? I don’t see anything in any of the comments saying that the Lancaster was designed by them.
In the street directory section of the 1918 Boston Register and Business Directory, Issue 83, this theater, as the Lancaster, was listed at 31 Lancaster Street, rather than on Causeway Street where the lobby entrance was located.
Perhaps the lobby entrance was moved during the 1963 renovations? (see my earlier comment that mentions 1963)
I know that the lobby entrance was on Causeway St. as of the 1941 MGM Report, so it probably was always there. There were side exits on Lancaster St., and maybe the office entrance was located there. During the 1963 renovations, the facade was removed and a new one constructed with lots of glass. But it was in the same location as the old facade.
I first noticed the theatre in the late 70’s when it was a Pussycat cinema. It was easy to spot from the tacky marquee down Causeway St. from the old Boston Garden. I enjoyed porn as well as hockey, so eventually I checked them out. Along with the old North Station Cinema, it created a sort of mini Combat Zone in the North End.