Coolidge Corner Theatre

It took the citizens of Brookline, Massachusetts, seventeen years to agree to build a cinema. Since 1906, the space had been used as a Universalist church, and folks were worried that introducing motion pictures would corrupt Brookline’s youth. Soon after the Great Depression began, however, the town finally relented, granting the right to build a 1,500-seat plush art-deco movie palace. Aroun Christmas of 1933, Coolidge Corner Theatre opened its doors as the community’s first cinema…and is still projecting today.

The Coolidge thrived for decades, but struggles arrived in the 1970s, as multiplexes proliferated. Toward the decade’s end, a man with a deep passion for cinema took over and redefined the Coolidge as an arthouse theater. It became a venue for indies, revivals, and foreign films. Audiences were reunited with or introduced to classic geniuses, and were treated to seeing Fred Astaire dance on the ceiling or Buster Keaton deadpan through a silent film on the big screen. Special events and live appearances by current actors and thinkers helped attract a wide audience.

All the same, advances in television and VCRs posed ongoing challenges to the theater. In 1988, the owner reluctantly made an agreement with a developer, who began plans to demolish the building or convert it into retail space. The next hero appeared: a local film teacher who entered the scene and spearheaded a grassroots movement. His Friends of the Coolidge group convinced the Brookline Historical Commission of the theater’s significance, a move that interrupted development and impending demolition. The Friends launched a campaign to purchase the building. Public support grew, and as the deadline loomed, four hundred locals arrived, formed a huge circle, and “hugged” the building in support.

Embraces aside, they couldn’t raise the hefty funds. But in highly cinematic fashion, a Brookline resident who had loved the Coolidge as a kid stepped in, purchased it, and leased it to the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation for ninety-nine years.

They celebrated by cutting a celluloid ribbon of film, before turning back on the lights and changing the letters on the marquee, announcing to the community: we did it—on with the show!

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