Elm Theatre
924 Quaker Lane South,
West Hartford,
CT
06110
924 Quaker Lane South,
West Hartford,
CT
06110
8 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 62 of 62 comments
http://www.savetheelm.org/
Thanks, Roger, we’ll try working with the Family on the pictures. Check our website, www.elmwoodrenaissance.org, toward the end of next week. We have a strategy meeting on Tuesday and will have ideas for action by the end of the week. If you’d like to attend the strategy session, the more “heads”, the better! Anyone, contact me at to take this off line.
C.M. Brown: As a born and raised West Hartford citizen (lived there from 1976 through 1997) who still lives within a 40 minute drive I would like to help save the Elm. How do I join your campaign?
The only interior shots that I know of that may exist are owned by the Perakos family which had promised to send them to me, but never did.
Folks, a history and some replies – The Perakos family reached out to the Town in 1999(?) to ask for a bilateral effort to solve traffic problems on a tricky corner to restimulate commercial growth, was ignored, went out of business. The current developer has built many “standard” Walgreens buildings and would have found it much more profitable (and Walgreens would have preferred) to demo and build a standard Walgreens building. The Town insisted they keep the theatre (yay, Town). The developer presented an alternative plan for the exterior (add, build out closer to the street)that more closely followed the Traditional Neighborhood Design Ordinance passed in 1998 for Elmwood, was turned down. (The local Historic authority issued a letter that the exterior of the building was worth preserving, not the interior. Ignored the balcony, staircases, 50-style fixtures, etc. and the ability to move the marquee and aluminum facade closer to the street. The rest of the building is a big, brick slab.) We believe that the “gutting” has been minimal (due to our speedy court actions), consising of removal of the chairs and, perhaps, a wall or two. We hope the balcony and stairs have not been touched.
The Elmwood Renaissance has held up the Town’s administrative approval of the “Walgreens Project” in court for the last year. We have been unable to present data that proves the Town undervalued the property (thereby bypassing the TND Ordinance) to any authority due to legal maneuvering. We are hoping that our “Save the Elm” campaign generates interest in the community to re-populate this theater and shopping area with arts-related tenants. Sadly, we’ve found that a lot of our neighbors still don’t know about the pending Walgreens! Our website will be updated in the next week as we develop our strategy for this informational and fundraising campaign.
Are there any pictures of the interior of the Elm? (Other than the ticket area shots on the website mentioned above.) We’d like to be able to show interested parties what the theater looked like in its heyday, before and after it was divided into two screens.
Glad to see all the “hits” in reply to my posting – it’s interest like this that will save this building.
Walgreens wants to use the existing building, but I think the town wants them to demolish it and build new so that they can realign a tricky intersection. Currently everything is being held up in planning and zoning I believe. I love the Elm since it was the only movie theatre in West Hartford, the town in which I grew up. After it closed I contacted a representative of the owner to ask for permission to take interior photos to preserve the building’s history. The owners refused. I asked if I could buy any memoribilia from the theatre. Nothing is for sale. The Perakos family who owned this theatre, along with the Southington Drive-In, are apparently money-grubbing leeches who have a bad reputation among theatre people here in CT. Anyway, more of my photos of the Elm can be found at http://www.cinematour.com/tour_us.php?id=496 . I especially like the photo of the marquee all lit up at night.
As can be seen in the photo above the Elm is in a strip. I think it may have been able to succeed as an art house, but could'ves and maybes are irrelevant now that Walgreen’s owns it and has gutted it in preparation for turning it into a pharmacy.
Would an art house work here? Great marquee, I bet it looks awesome lit up.
Join the “Save the Elm” campaign by logging on to our website, “elmwoodrenaissance.org”. This theatre is a local treasure and an arts resource worth saving. Let’s recycle this for the local arts scene. It should not join the long list of sites that have been lost due to short-sighted commercial development.
Elmwood Renaissance
I had several friends work there for some years in the middle to late 90’s till it closed down and I would go to visit them and watch movies in the balcony and hang out in the projectionist’s booth with my good friend’s. Sad to see it is not open anymore.
AngeloA
This theatre should not be listed as demolished since it still stands there, forlorn and abandoned.
The Elm was my neighborhood theater. They showed some of the biggest movies of the 1960’s for extended runs.
Some of the biggies were, “The Longest Day” “The Sound of Music” “Lawrence of Arabia”. I remember when “Gigot”, The Jackie Gleason movie played there, The theater loby was decorated as a french caffe and a Reneault car was on display. In the late ‘50’s early sixties they had Saturday afternoon matines with flicks like"The Three Stooges go to Mars" “The Spider” After the movie let out the kids would stand in line to use the theater phone booth to call parents to pick them up. Great childhood memories.
Paul Michaud
The Elm Theatre closed down in September 2002. The last movies it showed were Tadpole and Full Frontal. It will be demolished to make way for a chain pharmacy.