The Architectural Glory of Baltimore's Forgotten Movie Theaters

In June 1896, the first motion picture danced across a big screen in Maryland. Only two months earlier, the genre had debuted in New York City. Over the next 60 years, theaters would pop up across the country in huge numbers. First, as tiny nickelodeons (so named because it cost a nickel to enter) in home-sized buildings, then as enormous, architecturally impressive downtown movie palaces, and finally as suburban, strip-mall mainstays. For decades, well over 100 movie theaters dotted Baltimore’s streets and neighborhoods. Nowadays, Baltimorians will only find five. Nationwide, urban movie theaters are mostly a thing of the past.

At the National Building Museum’s new exhibit, Flickering Treasures, Rediscovering Baltimore’s Forgotten Movie Theaters, the full architectural and cultural history of movie theaters is seen through the lens of Baltimore Sun photojournalist Amy Davis. Curated by Deborah Sorensen, Davis’s photographs (originally published in a 2017 book) are joined by related artifacts and items compiled from local collectors, museums, dumps, and the theaters themselves.