Mount Adams Cinema
1136 Belvedere Street,
Cincinnati,
OH
45202
1136 Belvedere Street,
Cincinnati,
OH
45202
3 people
favorited this theater
This theatre is likely best known as a scrappy independent operation high up in the hills outside downtown Cincinnati. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, it often subsisted entirely on screenings of “Harold and Maude” and “King of Hearts”, which before the days of tape and DVD, people would come to watch again and again. Before they closed, they expanded the playlist to other cult movies prone to repeat viewing. One time a friend called for showtimes, and the person on the other end asked what time could he get there. Sure enough, the show was held for his party because they wound up being the only people to come.
It’s been hard to learn anything about the place post-mortem. Mt. Adams is a popular upscale neighborhood known for pubs and sightseeing: there is a church parking lot that has a magnificent view of downtown Cincinnati. Pity such an affluent neighborhood couldn’t sustain a local theatre.
Anyone with pictures, please post them. This is the one theatre of my childhood I never got to visit and it’s always killed me to have no memories of its appearance.
Contributed by
Marc Edward Heuck
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Recent comments (view all 9 comments)
The building is still there. If memory serves it is on the SE corner of Hatch and Belvedre St. They did add a new story to the building, that might be why it was thought to be torn down.
Only visit to the Mt Adams that I recall, is when I saw David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” – many years ago! Nice little artsy theatre, but Eraserhead gave me serious nightmares! ( : I, too, agree that building still exists – though now entirely an apartment house, no doubt upscale condos! (On Belvedere Street, I think? not sure)
That’s correct stubaby because the theater was originally called the Belvedere Th. During later ww2 years it was used for storage of Ch.5 TV studio scenery.Of course what doomed the cinema was its lack of parking as its early patrons were all walkins.
The Belvedere Theater was built sometime between 1911 and 1913. It seated 205 people in a silent era ,in the sound era a hole was cut into the rear of the structure to mount exterior speakers inside a weather proof box to provide audio to its patrons.The building has also been a Beer Hall and a Church.The Mt. Adams Cinema adopted its name in July of 1973.They showed both 16mm and 35mm in their venue so lots of art films and small independant flicks got a screening here. The Mt. Adams closed in 1979.The last theater operators of note were Parallax a firm based in San Fransisco,Ca.
I managed the Cinema when Parallax (actually based in Los Angeles) ran it from July 1978 to April 1979. Ray Williams, who owned the building, opened it up. I worked for Ray off and on, too, and for Michael Bazarri, who attempted to run it for a while in ‘77 before it closed, and then Parallax (now Landmark) attempted to run it. (They also had the Alpha for a while, from July '78 to December '78 but gave up on it. Northside then didn’t really support it as a repertory house.) After Parallax closed it another person gave it a run but closed it, too. It wasn’t the neighborhood (not entirely affluent back then)..it was parking parking parking – the great lack thereof that kept it from being successful. There were no lots or parking garages to speak of as far as I remember. That print of Harold and Maude slowly turned to dust as screened every night at 7:00 for a couple of years or so…and to call it splicy is an understatement. Mt. Adams also was the first home in Cincy for regular midnight screenings of Rocky Horror. And showing Eraserhead was a very happy time in my life!
That place did have its charm…it was just off the corner of Belvedere and Hatch. Next to it on the corner was/is a corner store, and the guy who ran it at the time lived above it. He had a German shepherd whose bark you could hear on occasion inside the cinema. I miss the sandwiches at Pia’s…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyum/3818093283/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyum/3818097581/
Sorry about the brevity, but there was no parking available and I was due to pick my daughter up from skating practice.
According to a recent Enquirer news article the Mt. Adams (nee Belvedere Th.) has become a ritzy condo with full occupancy. Nice that they saved the structure even with the loss of the cinema. The building had also been used to store scenery for Ch.#5 NBC Television during some of its down years.