Pi Alley 1-2

The building which contained the Pi Alley cinema is to be demolished at some future date so that the parcel can be “redeveloped”. I learned this from the business news in the Boston Herald.

I too saw Tommy in Quintaphonic Sound at the Pi Alley in two consecutive showings. Those days, they didn’t kick you out between shows.

It’s funny almost all of the theaters Sack Theaters developed were built into parking garages. Seems to have been a lot of garages built in Boston as part of the 1960s urban renewal projects. The Cheri was a stand-alone garage. The 57 was in the garage part of the 57 Hotel. The Beacon Hill was butted up against the One Beacon Street underground garage. The Pi Alley was in the Pi Alley garage. I think the only Sack Theater not in a garage was the Copley. The other theaters Sack bought from other companies.

For those unfamiliar with this cinema: in the very nice color photo posted above by Howard Haas, the original poster cases can be seen on the right and left just inside the opening under the marquee. The cinema was just a short distance up the alley, on the left side. In the distance you can see daylight at the east end of Pi Alley.

I never went into the Pi Alley, but from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s I walked thru Pi Alley almost every weekday morning around 815AM and the fire exit doors were sometimes open while cleaning was underway. The doors were on the south side of the alley about half way in.The auditorium (I only saw one) was the epitome of “plain”.

King’s book also states that the Pi Alley was twinned “soon” after opening in 1969. The theater was subdivided in 1978.

The Art was an Art Deco style building on the site of what is now an office building at the northwest corner of Hancock and Granite next to the cemetery which is also next to the old city hall. The current Flagship Cinema site used to be a Sears and Roebuck. When I was a kid, I remember seeing a faded sign for a theater on the wall of building near Sears. It gave the prices of the evening and matinee performances and it may have made reference to vaudville. I think my father said that they’d built Sears in what had been a theater building. Tom

BoxOfficeBill: Thanks for the background on the theaters. I was a teenager in the sixties and vaguely remember seeing one of the last of the beach blanket films at the Art and possibly Hercules. Kids matinees at the Strand were awful. They threw stuff at the screen; if kids did that today, they’d call the police. It was like a riot on simmer. It’s possible the Regent was that vaudville house. I recall the QuinTree, but never went there.

Tom N— see my serial postings for the Wollaston Theater last 30 Dec-2 Jan. As a kid who visited Quincy in ‘49-'50, I remeber hose theaters, and respondants have filled in the gaps in my memory. The Art on Hancock showed 20C-Fox films and was wonderfully art deco; the Strand on Coddington showed Warners product and was Palladian. I recall yet another, the Regent on (I think) Washington, which showed MGM and Columbia films and had a modified Beaux Arts style. I’m straining to recall a Publix-like theater that showed Paramount films. Finally, on the town line between Quincy and Braintree was the Quintree Drive-In. If the Quincy library has back issues of the local newspapers, you can start there.

Ron: When I get a chance to do the research, I have three theaters I want to add to this site: the Braintree Theater in that town, a single screen local that got converted to offices in the early sixties; the Strand Theater in Quincy which closed, possibly around 1980 and was demolished maybe ten years later; and the Art theater, also in Quincy which was demolished for an office building in the seventies, I think. IIRC, the Art was somewhat Art Deco in style and the nicest of these three architecturally. Quincy may have had at least one other theater because I recall the Sears store had been a vaudeville house, and they often got converted to movies.

I’d wait a day or so before contacting the site masters.

The Academy is not currently listed on this site. Please add it and give us whatever information you know.

The Cinema 57 (which has its own page here) had two screens when it closed. It never had more than two. One is now the live-stage Stuart Street Playhouse, the other is a golf school.

Sonny and Eddy’s Theatres, which I think also had the name ‘Fall River Theatres’ at one point, was a small art-house chain which at its high point ran the Allston Cinemas, Central Square Cinemas in Cambridge, Galeria Cinema in Cambridge (later renamed Janus Cinema under different ownership), Exeter Street Theatre in Boston, and Academy Twin Cinemas in Newton Centre. None of these are still open.

Cate Enterprises at one point owned the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge.

The 57, I suspect, was built as a twin – the two auditoriums faced in opposite directions, divided cleanly in the middle by the lobby, with one auditorium facing left and the other facing right. As it was, if the 57 was twinned after opening, it was a non-traditional twinning, with the original auditorium not being divided; Federman’s involvement, thus, would have either been in the creation of a second auditorium or in the initial design of the entire space.