West End Cinema
75 Causeway Street,
Boston,
MA
02114
75 Causeway Street,
Boston,
MA
02114
2 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 37 comments found
Yes, it was an E.M. Loew’s theater and it was a full-size house. Later it presented art-house product for awhile. And it was not the same as the “North Station 1-2” or “1-2-3” storefront cinemas (on XXX product). And it was later the West End Pussycat cinema. dickneeds111 mentions above the Art 1&2 cinema across from the Majestic/Saxon on Tremont St. That’s one Boston cinema which I don’t believe is listed here in Cinema Treasures. It was mostly a Gay cinema and occupied former bank space in the Hotel Touraine building.
The E.M. Loews West end theatre and the North Station 1-2-3 or however many there were are and never the same. The West End theatre ended its life a a Pussycat Porn House. Who owned the Art 1&2 across from the Saxon on Tremont St. I remember these being Gay houses.
Even into its X-rated days, it was “E.M. Loew’s West End Cinema” — until it was one day renamed “West End Pussycat”.
It was a first-run art house for a considerable period in the 1960s. I remember seeing films here like “Family Diary,” “The Grand Olympics” “Woman in the Dunes.”
The old West End theatre was still operating across from the Old Garden down Causeway St a couple of blocks in the late 50’s to early 60’s. At one time I believe it might have been an E>M> Lowes operation. It had a BIG mARQUEE WHICH WAS LIKE MOST OF THAT CHAINS THEATRES. iT WAS A GOOD SIZE AND NOT A BAND BOX OR STORE FRONT. iT WAS A 2ND RUN neighborhood theatre.
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.
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.
Perhaps the lobby entrance was moved during the 1963 renovations? (see my earlier comment that mentions 1963)
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.
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.
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!
Funk & Wilcox were the architects of the entire Boston Garden/North Station complex (1928-1998).
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.
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.
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 no real idea, but I’d imagine it was gone by the 50’s and certainly by the time the B&M RR cut the number of tracks in half at North Station and gave over much of the outside platform areas to parking lots. The old North Station (from the 20’s to the 50’s) had quite an extensive concourse, with various shops, waiting rooms, restaurants, etc. and most of these were closed off to the public or significantly reduced after B&M inter-city rail ceased in the 60’s.
I would guess that the cinema was probably reconfigured into retail space or other uses so long ago that there would have been no trace of it in the station in the years I went there (80’s-90’s.)
Ian, where was it in the old North Station, and what was it used for by the time the station (and Boston Garden) were demolished?
Joe, that was a little cinema that was actually IN the North Station building. Like the South Station Theatre, it was a smallish space that catered to the throngs of railway riders.
The original owner of the Lancaster Theatre was a 1900 Harvard graduate named Kenneth Sherburne. In a 1921 volume containing autobiographical material from the class of 1900’s members, Sherburne’s section includes these lines: “…in 1916 I built and am still operating the Lancaster Theatre in Boston. It has not been a howling success financially so far, but is coming along as well as could be expected. It keeps me busy seven days a week, and is the best fun I have ever had.”
This Lancaster’s age precludes it from being the proposed theater mentioned in a 1932 issue of The Bridgemen’s Magazine, a trades union journal. The item said “Boston — North Station Theatre Co., c/o Boston & Maine Ry. Co., North Station, bids in April, 1 story, brick theatre, at end of concourse at North Station, Causeway St. $150000. Funk & Wilcox, 26 Pemberton Sq., archts.“ Does anyone know if this theater was built, and if so what it was called? It would have been in the same neighborhood as the West End Cinema, which was about two blocks from North Station.
A list of around 50 Pussycat Theaters was published today on the San Diego Reader site – View link
The West End Pussycat and its Boston sister Stuart theater were run by reputed mob boss Mickey Zaffarano of the NYC/Times Square Pussycat. Reciting from the U.S. Department of Justice Report “Organized Crime Involvement in Pornography†(June 8, 1977), “Major pornography figure Michael Zaffarano is said to have connections with the pornography business in Boston. His brother-in-law, Anthony Carl Mascolo, received financial backing from Zaffarano in January 1976 in order to open two pornographic theaters in Boston. They are known as the Pussycat Cinema 1 and the Pussycat West End Cinema.â€
“During a raid at the West End Cinema in January 1977, detectives found secret records in a hidden compartment reflecting that part of the gross receipts were being skimmed. As a result of the raids, Mascolo had been arrested twice and charged with violations of state obscenity statutes…Joseph Paladino allegedly receives a part of the gross of both Pussycat Cinemas.â€
Item from Boxoffice magazine, November 11, 1963, announcing the opening of the West End Cinema.
View link
(Article on lower right.)
Here is a June 1973 item from Boxoffice magazine:
http://tinyurl.com/yfy26bf
As the Lancaster Theatre, this house had an ad in the Boston Globe during Christmas week in 1921. Shows were continuous from 11 AM to 1050PM with double features which changed on Thursdays, i.e. 2 movies Mon-Wed, and 2 more on Thurs-Sat. Their motto was “The Best Picture House in Town”.
The Lancaster Theatre is visible on this 1928 map. It is on Lancaster Street, near the top right of the map.
(the map is quite large, so you may not want to click that link if you’re on a dialup connection.)
Around 1980 or 1981 a youngster who worked part-time in the mail room at my office told me that the previous Saturday night he and a friend had gone to an event at the Boston Garden which had been cancelled at the last minute. So they decided to go down the street to the West End Pussycat. He was astonished to find that the theatre was so full that they had to take seperate seats; moreover, most of the patrons there seemed to be couples on dates which further astonished him as he did not think that the Pussycat was a proper place to escort a young lady !