The Avon Cinema (260 Thayer Street,

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts ...

) is an

independent movie theater An independent movie theater (American English) or indie cinema (British English) is a movie theater which screens independent, art house, foreign, or other non-mainstream films. It can be contrasted with a mainstream theater (often a multiple ...

near Brown University on the East Side of Providence. The Avon's

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

styling dates from its opening in February 1938.Avon Cinema
/ref> The theater primarily screens

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

, art house, and foreign films. The theatre has been owned by the same family since 1938. It seats 486 and has one screen.

History

260 Thayer Street began as the Toy Theater in 1915. The theater soon closed and possibly served as an amateur theatre or gymnasium with parking garage for a few years. The Dulgarian family purchased the theatre in 1938, advertising it as devoted to "the showing of unusual pictures." The new cinema debuted on February 15, 1938 with the French film Beethoven's Great Love (titled "The Life and Loves of Beethoven" in the U.S.). Tickets cost 50 cents for evening shows, 40 cents for matinees, and 25 cents before 2pm. According t
Cinema Treasures
the movie '' Marty'' premiered here, among others. They had what was also described as a "first-run 'class' policy" continuing through the 1960s. In the 1970s the Avon became a repertory house and was known as the Avon Repertory Cinema. In 1983, they returned to showing "first run foreign and domestic films of distinction." During the Blizzard of 1978, the Avon retained power despite a widespread outage. The owners kept the heat on, and allowed patrons to stay the night. In 2018, the cinema celebrated 80 years of continuous operation in the hands of a single family. The owners say they try to "keep the experience as close to how our grandparents saw movies as possible."

Renovations

In 1937, Louis Gordon Theatres Inc. leased the property from the Dulgarian Brothers with the intention of turning it back into a theater. Since then, any renovations have been minor and the property remains in the hands of the Dulgarians. A heavy maroon curtain to cover the screen was added in the 1970s, and in the 1980s a false ceiling was removed from the lobby to uncover the original arched ceiling. The theatre held a grand re-opening party in 1988 to celebrate the renovation. A digital projector was installed in 2014, as distributors moved away from distributing films on 35mm reels.

References

External links

{{stack, {{commonscat, Avon Cinema
Avon Cinema

American Theatre Architecture Archive
Cinemas and movie theaters in Rhode Island Theatres in Rhode Island Buildings and structures in Providence, Rhode Island Art Deco architecture in Rhode Island