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BoxOffice takes a look at Boston's historic Coolidge Comer Theatre as the Art House Convergence prepares its 2015 Regional Seminar
Katherine Tallman, Executive Director and CEO, Coolidge Corner Theatre
What were the early days of the Coolidge Corner Theatre like?
It was initially built as a church and changed into a movie theater in 1933, the height of the Great Depression, as a gorgeous Art Deco movie house-and it still looks that way. The community at the time wasn't very interested in having a movie theater; people were concerned with that kind of amusement during that period in our history. It took the people of Brookline 17 years to say yes to the idea. It operated as a movie theater under different ownership between 1933 until 1989.
And that's when it became a nonprofit. What is the story behind that?
In the years leading up to that, someone had purchased the theater and operated it as a for-profit cinema and turned the original theater, which was about 1,200 seats, into a theater and a balcony. But he couldn't really make a go of it and decided that he was going to have to sell it. A local real estate developer wanted to buy it and turn it into a shopping mall or office building or something horrible. Brookline is a very tight-knit and engaged community, and people came together and did a "Save the Coolidge" campaign, something really extraordinary when we look back on it today, because they did it without the Internet. They came up with a pretty good sum of money, but it wasn't enough for the bank to give them a loan to move forward with keeping the theater open. That's when another developer stepped in, bought the building, and put it into a charitable trust...