Rotunda Cinemas
711 West 40th Street,
Baltimore,
MD
21211
711 West 40th Street,
Baltimore,
MD
21211
4 people
favorited this theater
Showing 18 comments
September 13th, 1974 grand opening ad in the photo section.
Permanently closed July 8, 2015. A new theater by Cobb Circuit will take its place adjacent to the former Rotunda.
The Rotunda Cinemas now has 4 screens, all with digital projection and sound. There is also a coffee shop named “Reel Coffee” as part of the complex.
I stand corrected about the Rotunda opening as a single theater, and thanks for the proof… I was young at the time, so maybe the theater just seemed like it was bigger. But could The Empire Strikes Back have been shown there? I swear I saw it there.
The website for the Rotunda Cinemas is now http://www.therotundacinemas.com/
The Rotunda Cinemas will be adding a 4th screen and coffee shop to be open this summer.
This is a great neighborhood theater that was re-opened a couple years back by my good friend Ira Miller and his partners. The three theaters are small when compared to the giant mega-complexes seen today. Very reminiscent of how going to the movies used to be. Clean, friendly, comfortable with great prices. Plans are in the works to possibly expand further. Try this place and enjoy the show. I am sure you will like it and return again and again. The lady in the photo is Patty Duke. A big movie and TV star of the 50’s and 60’s. Remember her with Anne Bancroft in “The Miracle Worker” where she portrayed Helen Keller. That was some brilliant acting in that script
BD, you most definitely did NOT see “Empire” at the Rotunda, and it was DEFINITELY a twin. I saw “Apocalypse Now” there in December 1979, and “Mary Poppins” in summer 1980.
You might be thinking of the Hillendale on Taylor Ave., where “Empire” played in imperfectly-framed 70MM.
AS for the Rotunda, during “Poppins” there was a loud buzz in the speaker every time an idle projector was started for a reel change! (Yes, there were still twin reel-to-reel machines there.)
The current operator of the Rotunda (whose name I can’t remember) was a booker for J-F Theatres in the 1970s. He plans to add a third screen.
The Rotunda did open in the 1970s, but it was not always a twin house. I remember seeing Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back there in 1980, and I’m pretty sure it was a full screen. Not sure if it was “Cinerama” but it was a full screen.
The Rotunda Twin, originally opened in the 1970s by J-F Theatres, has always been a small twin house (it’s on the ground floor of a tiny mall). It would’ve been impossible to install Cinerama there.
If it was, its hard to tell. When I saw a movie there it was just an ordinary theater, albeit small with a decent sized screen, say 30 feet maybe?
When was this ever a Cinerama theater?
Oops. It should be senator.com. Sorry.
jodar check your links the Senator you hyper link to is a restaurant in Toranto
This venue has resumed operations as of 5/15/09. The status should be changed to open. Showtimes and info are at www.thesenator.com
Here is an item on the closing:
http://tinyurl.com/c6a486
Is this still a cinerama theater? With seating for less than 300 I can’t envision it as being a terribly huge screen. But one I’ll be checking out anyway.
For some reason, I had envisioned this theater to be an art deco-type moviehouse like the Senator. I saw “Osama” (2003) here (in Feb ‘04) and, unfortunately, didn’t get to experience the Dolby Digital Surround EX sound system. Its not the film’s fault, as the movie is a low-budget ($40K) foreign language film. I’m wondering if this moviehouse was one auditorium at one time. The staff didn’t know.