- I'm Richard Weiss,
and I've been a movie theater architect for over 25 years,
designing Alamo Drafthouses in Austin, Texas,
and all around the country.
Today, we're gonna look at the history
and evolution of movie theater design.
We're gonna look at nickelodeons, movie palaces,
drive-in theaters, megaplexes, dine-in theaters,
and what's next for movies.
We're looking at an advertisement
for Thomas Edison's Vitascope,
which was one of the first projectors,
with vita meaning life and scope meaning to look at,
to look at life.
Since movie theaters didn't exist at the time,
they would take this projector
and tour it around the country in theaters
that were originally created for the vaudeville troupes
that formed after the Civil War.
I can tell this is a vaudeville theater
because it was modeled
after the late Italian Renaissance theaters
with curved seating, side balconies
and a stage with an apron.
However, it was adapted for the Vitascope
with light from the projector and a screen.
Originally, these screens, which need to reflect light,
were painted silver,
which is why they were called the silver screen.
Now we're gonna look at the nickelodeon,
which were the first spaces
that were designed specifically to house movies.
Nickelodeon derives from the word nickel,
which is what it cost for admission,
and odeon, which is Greek for small theater.
The TV network, Nickelodeon,
was named after one of these first theaters.
Now as you can see here,
you've got a small screen in a long shotgun building,
which was probably a an old storefront
that they adapted for the movie.
This is an early example
that wasn't really perfect for movie display.
You can see there's a big pipe running through the center.
It's got a low ceiling.
The seats are off to the side
because the projector was in the center.
The beginnings of a movie theater
are starting to germinate here
with an aisle, seating, screen, sound.
This is an old phonograph, and projector at the rear.
In this case, the way they synced up the sound of the movie
was dropping the needle perfectly.
While nickelodeons allowed people to see movies,
they weren't specifically designed to show movies.
However, their success empowered the industry
to create movie palaces.
Movie palaces were beautiful, ornate pantheons
to movie going with incredible details
that really transformed your experience
as much as the movie itself.
This is an early example of a movie palace
that was the Brooklyn Theater,
located, of course, Los Angeles.
Here's everything that jumps out to me.
You've got a domed ceiling, beautiful medallions,
a very detailed cornice
supported by these fluted columns with Corinthian capitals
and this raked seating sloping to the front
to make sure that everybody can see the centerpiece,
which is the proscenium
with a keystone in the middle housing the movie screen.
The proscenium was generally an archway
with beautiful ornate details
and a slight apron that stuck out past the edge.
This carried over from the Italian Renaissance theaters.
While this is a black and white image,
movie palaces had beautiful gilded gold details,
red curtains, beautiful red theater seats.
It was a opulent and transformative experience,
and they could be beautifully ornate with themes,
like Grauman's Chinese theater,
or replicate previous styles.
But art deco, which formed around the 1920s in France,
became the predominant style for movie theater architecture.
Originally, there wasn't sound in movies
so there would be an accompaniment,
an orchestra or a piano player, sometimes piano and drums,
that would play along with the movie.
This is a great example
of the exterior elements of a movie palace.
This is an art deco style theater,
and you can see with these art deco fenestrations the side,
these beautiful carved panels.
This vertical sign is known as a blade sign
and generally has neon letters.
The other elements of this theater are the marquee,
which is comprised here of neon banding, a reader board,
and the reader board had these changeable letters
for all of the pictures, and chasing light bulbs.
Chasing light bulbs are light bulbs
that go on and off in a pattern
in order to entice people to move into the theater.
In this image, we see the back of a movie palace
with this architecturally fenestrated balcony
with carved faces in it
and people sitting up in the balcony
above a coffered ceiling and an audience.
In the 1950s,
movie theaters faced one of their first big challenges,
which was the advent of television,
bringing a screen into your home.
This led to a variety of different experiences
in order to get people out of the house.
Next up, the drive-in theater.
Here's everything that jumps out to me
about this marquee for the Westbury drive-in.
First of all, it's an example of googie architecture,
which was an architecture that started in the '50s and '60s
that was influenced by the space race,
and you can see there's an atom
and chasing bulbs leading up to the atom.
The drive-in screen itself was actually a billboard
with cars on one side and the street on the other
with advertisements on the back of the screen.
So literally, all you needed for a drive-in theater
was a big field, a huge billboard,
a marque sign and cars.
So that was the drive-in,
and now we're gonna take a left turn to the Cinerama dome.
The Cinerama dome,
which was built in the '60s in Los Angeles,
was modeled after Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome.
You can see a series of small triangular panels
that were on a very light frame,
and the architecture was relatively inexpensive to build
but created this huge impact.
This was also considered googie architecture,
and was a beacon to moviegoers.
The theater technology within it was state of the art.
Now, this beautiful diagram shows all of the pieces
that made up the Cinerama technology.
Rather than one camera,
you've got your five speakers behind the screen,
this huge curved screen,
three projectors that cast one single image.
It was really incredible technology at the time,
but it never really caught on
because at this time in the '60s,
the entire cinema industry was in decline.
The '60s and '70s were a time of upheaval
in the cinema industry.
Television had become the norm,
and the economy could no longer support
single-screen theaters,
which were often built specifically for movies.
These vacant buildings were caught between heaven and hell,
either becoming churches or X-rated theaters.
Movie theaters desperately needed a boost,
and that boost came in 1975
when Steven Spielberg released "Jaws,"
the first blockbuster.
The success of "Jaws" led to movies like "Star Wars"
and "Superman" and a revitalization of cinema.
The blockbuster became so popular
that they would release numerous blockbusters at a time,
and there wasn't the theater infrastructure
to support all of these different movies
that people wanted to see,
which led to the creation of the multiplex.
This Regal Cinema is a good example of a multiplex exterior.
It still has a vertical column
similar to the art deco style,
but most of the ornamentation is gone.
You can see neon.
However, there's no articulation on the facade
to support it.
This is also an interesting image
because it highlights the most important part
of the megaplex to the owner which was the concession stand.
♪ Let's all go to the lobby ♪
- Let me draw you a floor plan of a typical multiplex.
This lobby was flanked by corridors
which led to all of the individual theaters
that made up the multiplex.
The hallway could be extended up to 36 theaters,
but what's interesting is that the galleries,
which served as circulation for people
to get into the theaters on the first floor,
had a mezzanine above
that provided a space for all of the projectors.
This was a very economical way to get thousands of people
into one building to take advantage of concessions
and see a multitude of movies.
These multi and megaplexes were often anchors
for shopping malls or huge individual buildings
with a sea of parking
to accommodate movies at their highest volumes.
Most of these megaplexes were built by large corporations
all across the country and became pretty homogenous,
unlike the very intricate movie palaces.
There was hardly any exterior articulation
or interior articulation.
Aesthetically, these theaters were filled
with crazy carpet patterns,
used to hide inevitable drink and nacho cheese spills,
and nonstop advertising for concessions and new releases.
The multiplex also had cup holders,
folding seats, often reclining chairs,
and often in order to pack people into the theaters,
they would build very narrow aisles,
and a lot of times build seats right up against the screen.
Now, people have very particular tastes
about where they want to sit in a movie theater
with the center being the most popular
followed by the last row.
Nobody wants to sit up front.
The reason why many people avoided the front seat
is because with these large screens,
it forced people to crane their neck
and not even be able to see the entire picture,
which is a problem that I tried to solve
in my own architecture.
Now we're gonna talk about specialty theaters.
The nice thing about independent theaters
is they can play whatever they want
from repertory films to blockbusters.
It's really up to the cinema owner.
There are numerous independent theaters and theater types,
but since I'm the architect for Alamo Drafthouse,
I'm gonna talk about Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas.
This is the renovated interior
of the Mission Theater in San Francisco,
which is a converted movie palace.
All of the original architectural details,
including these fluted Corinthian columns are still intact
and have been completely restored.
What we added were the curved rows with tables
to allow for food service right up at your table,
and where you see this scalloped balcony,
which previously would've housed guests in the balcony,
there's now a back wall curtain
because the balcony has been converted
to four additional theaters.
As you can see, there's little sheets of paper with pencils
and the table is critical
to the design of an Alamo Drafthouse theater.
It needs to accommodate a place to order,
a menu which is set underneath the table,
and then a tiny light so that you can read the menu
and not cast a glow on the theater itself.
So a typical movie theater would have seats
all the way up to the screen.
But in the Alamo Drafthouse, we came up with a metric
where we take the height of the screen, and tump it down,
and there's no seats allowed
from the the edge of the screen to the edge of that height.
We try and celebrate movies at every turn.
Movie themed lobbies,
galleries that become museum-like poster galleries.
Preservation is critical to the history of cinema,
whether preserving old films
or old posters or even old cinemas.
The renovation of the new Mission Cinema was a great example
of bringing a key theater back to life.
So that is the evolution of movie theater architecture.
Do you have a favorite movie theater?
Let us know in the comments below.
Those look like a bunch of baked potatoes.
♪ Baked potatoes at the movies ♪