Garde Arts Center New London from southwest

The Garde Arts Center is a non-profit performing arts center and cinema located at 325 State Street at the corner of Huntington Street in

New London, Connecticut New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States, located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut. It was one of the world's three busiest whaling ports for several decade ...

. It owns and operates the Garde Theatre, a historic movie palace.

History

The theater was built in 1926, designed by architect Arland W. Johnson as a

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

house and movie theater. It has a Moroccan-style interior featuring middle-eastern themed wall murals by Vera Leeper. The Garde Arts Center includes the Garde Office Building, the Oasis Room, a 120-seat music performance space, the Mercer Building where the Center's offices are located, and the Meridian Building, a service facility. All three buildings are located on the site of the mansion of whaling merchant William Williams."Architects and Architecture"
on the New London Landmarks website The theater was built under the direction of Arthur S. Friend, a New York movie studio attorney who was a partner in

Famous Players-Lasky Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and ...

, a movie distribution company that became Paramount Pictures Corporation. The Garde was named after Walter Garde, a Hartford and New London businessman; it opened on September 22, 1926 with the silent film ''

The Marriage Clause ''The Marriage Clause'' is a 1926 silent film drama directed by Lois Weber and starring Francis X. Bushman and Billie Dove. It was produced and released by Universal Pictures. The film marked a return to directing for Weber, who had taken a bre ...

'' starring matinee idols Francis X. Bushman (1883-1966) and

Billie Dove Lillian Bohny (born Bertha Eugenie Bohny; May 14, 1903 – December 31, 1997), known professionally as Billie Dove, was an American actress. Early life and career Dove was born Bertha Eugenie Bohny in New York City in 1903 to Charles and Ber ...

(1903-1997). It was hailed by the press as one of the finest theaters in New England. It was a stage for

Vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

as well as film, as was typical in that time, and variety acts of music, comedy, acrobatics, and magic were interspersed between feature films, comedy shorts, and newsreels. In September 1929, the theater and the four-story Garde office building were purchased by

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

for $1 million, one of 18 theaters in New England that the studio purchased to introduce their new "talking pictures" technology. The Garde was closed in 1977 under the ownership of RKO-Stanley-Warner and sold to a local business family. It was in danger of being demolished until 1985 when the Garde Arts Center was founded to save and reuse the theatre."History"
on the Garde Arts Center website

References

Notes

External links

*{{commonscat-inline, Garde Arts Center Theatres in Connecticut Buildings and structures in New London, Connecticut Art Deco architecture in Connecticut Theatres completed in 1926