The State Theatre
Local architect Henry Hinckley designed this impressive building as an automobile showroom and shop that opened in 1915. A decade later owners hired noted theater architect Victor Rigaumont to convert the building into a theatre with an interior meant to be a “feast for the senses.” Moorish and Renaissance Revival details adorned the richly ornamented interior, along with Collegiate Gothic symbolism to recognize Ithaca’s college-town character. Opened in 1928, the State operated as a vaudeville theatre and began showing movies in the 1930s.The aging building faced the threat of demolition in the late 1990s. With widespread community support, Historic Ithaca, Tompkins County’s only preservation organization, stepped in to save the building in 1998. With this first phase of repairs complete, the State Theater reopened in 2001 with a community celebration. Historic Ithaca managed ongoing rehab work over the next few years, including exterior restoration of the façade and marquee and interior restoration of significant design elements.The preservation organization sold the theater in 2009 to the newly formed State Theatre of Ithaca, Inc., whose primary mission is the continued preservation and operation of the community cultural institution. Today the State Theatre is one of the most significant performing arts venues in the Finger Lakes Region, hosting community performances as well as national and international acts and anchoring downtown Ithaca’s cultural and economic revitalization.The State Theatre is an individually designated local landmark and listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places. It is Ithaca's only remaining movie palace to still screen movies.ARCHITECT: Henry Hinckley; interior redesign by Victor RigaumontOPENED: 1928 Still in useLISTEN HERE
Cinemapolis
Founded by Lynne Cohen and Rich Szanyi in 1986, Cinemapolis began as a single-screen theater in the basement of Center Ithaca on the Commons. The first film screened was Akira Kurosawa's Ran. By 1988, Lynne and Rich had expanded to add a second screen in the basement location. In the Fall of 1990, they took over operations at Fall Creek Pictures, a repertory cinema originally opened by Tsvi Bokaer on North Tioga Street (currently home to the Botanist Coffee House). With this acquisition, they continued offering five total screens of independent film for the next decade.In 2006, when the City of Ithaca began plans to locate a new cinema in the heart of downtown, Cinemapolis campaigned to be chosen to operate the new theater. Determined to build a modern movie theater with stadium seating and larger screens, the team worked closely with the city's developer to design a new facility. A capital campaign comprised of private donations and state grants raised more than $300,000 for equipment and furnishings, and hundreds of hours of community volunteer labor contributed to the finishing touches.Opened in June 2009, the "new" Cinemapolis on Green Street is a fully accessible five-screen theater that serves as a hub for independent film and cultural activity in Ithaca’s vibrant downtown arts district. Thanks to the financial support of more than 1,000 member "Cinemapolitans," the theater hosts more than 120 film screenings every week. In 2012, facing the impending demise of 35mm projection for first-run independent film, the cinema once again successfully tapped into community support and launched a campaign to raise funds for digital conversion. Completed in the Fall of 2013, the conversion of all five auditoriums to digital projection and sound not only preserved the theater’s ability to screen first-run films, it opened up new opportunities to regularly integrate special events, film festivals, and locally produced projects. This flexibility has also resulted in an increased role for the theater as a site for community-oriented presentations and meetings.Attracting more than 70,000 patrons annually, Cinemapolis is one of Central New York’s premiere art house cinemas and Ithaca's only downtown movie theater, presenting a year-round program of first-run independent, international, and locally produced films alongside special programming to engage and enrich the community. Their screens provide a regional attraction, as they frequently feature films that can’t be seen elsewhere within a 100-mile radius of Tompkins County.By Brett Bossard, Executive Director, CinemapolisLISTEN HERE
Lyceum
In its earliest days as the Lyceum Opera House, this grand theater hosted live stage productions starring such famed actors as Sarah Bernhardt, John Barrymore, and Lillian Russell. The Lyceum was the brain-child of violinist Max Gutstadt, who had helped co-found the Ithaca Conservatory of Music with W. Grant Egbert.A large portico marked the Cayuga Street entrance of the Neoclassical building. Rochester theatre designers Leon H. Lempert and Sons faced a unique design challenge for the site of the Lyceum Opera House, which opened in 1893. Theater-goers entered a long, narrow lobby facing Cayuga Street and then proceeded to a deep auditorium set at a ninety-degree angle to the entrance. On opening night bright lamps illuminated the drapery-festooned stage and a domed ceiling decorated in pink and bronze tones. Gilded pillars supported the balcony, and private theater boxes provided excellent views of the stage.The stage of the L-shaped building bordered Green Street on what is today the site of City Hall.The Lyceum became a regular venue for movies in the 1920s but continued to offer a mix of live shows and films until its closure in 1927. The building was used for a variety of short-term performances and lectures before it was demolished in 1933.ARCHITECTS: Leon H. Lempert and Sons of Rochester, theatre designersOPENED: 1893 DEMOLISHED: 1933LISTEN HERE
The Ithaca Theatre
To celebrate its opening in 1941, the 600-seat Ithaca Theater screened “Moon Over Miami,” starring Betty Grable and Don Ameche. A wedge-shaped marquee projecting from the theater’s tinted block façade announced the film. Green neon tubing lit up the “ITHACA” name above the marquee, branding it as the “modern” theater promised in its advertising. Local owners, brothers John and James Ryan, sold the Ithaca in 1965. By 1991 it was converted into the Ithaca Music Hall for live performances. The venue closed in 1995, and Bishop’s Carpet One bought the building in 1998 for use as a warehouse.ARCHITECT: Stanley PerezOPENED: 1941 Converted to warehouseLISTEN HERE
Star
The Star Theatre had a brief but shining reign as a movie palace. Below a marquee and elegant, arched windows framed by classical pilasters, three entrances welcomed theater patrons to the 1,135-seat venue. The Star opened as a vaudeville theatre but from 1914 to 1919 showed movies, including those by the local Wharton Studio.In 1920, not long after the Ithaca Theatre Company bought the Star, Strand, and Crescent Theaters, the Star closed. In 1921, the Ithaca Conservatory of Music (later Ithaca College) purchased the building to use as a gymnasium. The Tompkins Trust Company bought it in 1965 and demolished the structure for a parking lot, which was replaced in 2018 by the Tompkins Financial office building.ARCHITECTS: Gibb & Waltz, prominent local architects of many Cornell and City of Ithaca buildingsOPENED: 1911 DEMOLISHED: 1965LISTEN HERE
Crescent
Ithaca’s first purpose-built movie palace, the 1,300-seat Crescent Theatre boasted a wide metal awning and an impressive oval marquee. An artist specializing in theater interiors decorated the theater’s classically inspired interior. A Marr and Colton Company orchestral organ provided musical accompaniment to shows. The Crescent auditorium’s sloping floor was leveled in 1931, and the space was converted to a dance hall. In 1946, the Ithaca Conservatory of Music (later Ithaca College) purchased the building to use as their “Aurora gym.” (The former Star Theater was known as the college’s “Seneca gym.”) In the ‘70s the building found new life as a night club and disco before being converted in 1985 by HOLT Architects for office use. Chiang O’Brien Architects renovated the building in 2016.ARCHITECTS: Gibb & WaltzOPENED: 1916 Adaptively reused as office spaceLISTEN HERE
Strand
The Strand’s neo-Tudor, Collegiate Gothic style was a nod to the college town’s large student population. Cornell students nicknamed it the "Near-Near" for its proximity to campus. A narrow brick and limestone facade opened to a neoclassical interior with ample seating on orchestra and balcony levels. Originally operated as both a vaudeville and movie house, it hosted stage shows featuring well-known actors in the 1930s and 1940s. In the ’50s and through its closure in 1975, the popular downtown venue showed only movies, reflecting changes in the entertainment world. After a short stint as a non-profit arts organization, the building closed in 1982 and remained vacant until its much-lamented demolition in 1993, despite being a locally designated landmark and listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. The Canopy by Hilton hotel and its Strand Café now occupy part of the Strand Theater’s former site.ARCHITECT: Edgar Townsley; Driscoll Brothers BuildersOPENED: 1917 DEMOLISHED: 1993LISTEN HERE
Temple
The Temple opened in December 1928, one week after the opening of the State Theatre. Sandwiched between the old Ithaca High School (now the Dewitt Mall) and the Star Theatre, the deep, narrow red brick building had 840 seats to entertain moviegoers. Owner Harry Clark sold the theater to Cornell Cinemas in 1930 and became part of that company while staying on as the theater’s manager. The new owner redecorated the theater in a “Spanish modernistic style.” The Tompkins Trust Company demolished the Temple after its purchase in 1976 to accommodate drive-up teller service.OPENED: 1928 DEMOLISHED: 1976LISTEN HERE
Cornell Cinema
Cornell Cinema was established in 1970 as a university film society but has evolved into a regional exhibition program with a national reputation, open to the general public. It has made Willard Straight Hall's University Theatre its home since 1990. Cornell’s University Theatre opened in Willard Straight Hall in 1925. Films in the theater were part of the original plan. “The spotlight loft included . . . a motion picture machine of the latest improved model,” the Ithaca Journal reported in November 1925. The first showing, in November 1927, was of a World War I film and Princeton and Columbia football games. Only the best two hundred seats were sold because the 16-millimeter-gauge equipment projected such small pictures. Feature movies came to the theater in 1936. Ten films from the Museum of Modern Art enlivened the spring semester as a result of the efforts of Walter H. Stainton ’20, Ph.D. ’27. Stainton . . . was committed to the importance of film as an art from. Stainton launched a film-studies course at Cornell in 1936, and his public-outreach program of showing good films on campus became a tradition in the Straight theater.The University Theatre, like Willard Straight Hall, is a period piece. . . . The murals set the atmosphere of this intimate theater and “are still among the most cherished features of the Cornell campus.” J. Monroe Hewlett (1868-1941), a mural painter from New York, was commissioned to decorate the walls of the theater. Hewlett had acquired a name in New York as an architect, and set designer for the stage and opera. He painted murals at the Columbia University Club, planned two Brooklyn hospitals, and was the director of the American Academy in Rome from 1932 to 1935.To the right as you enter the auditorium (on the west wall) are Shakespearean scenes with their accompanying verses; to the left (on the east wall) are scenes and verses from the Greek classic theater. The figures form a procession moving toward the stage. When the theater was renovated by Cornell Cinema and the University in 1990, four speakers were hung on each wall as part of the new sound system, which may be distracting to mural viewers. The classical motif is continued around the top border of the theater with alternating tragic and comic masks (two tragics to one comic). The painted “brickwork” extends to the back of the theater, which ties it in with the whole design and gives a feeling of space. Such illusionistic space devices, called quadratura, were probably used to work against the reality of this Little Theatre with no windows.The lobby, with its segmental arches and barrel-vaulted ceiling, is in keeping with the medieval theme of the building. A wrought-iron hanging lamp and intricate decorative grillwork are featured on the east wall, showing swords (their handles with grotesque profiles) like spokes of a wheel pointing toward the tragic mask in the center.Excerpted from Rebecca H. Cofer, The Straight Story: An Informal History of Willard Straight Hall, 1925-1990For current schedule and ticketing information, as well as special event photos from the past 20 years, visit cinema.cornell.edu. Cinemaphiles can purchase an All-Access pass to enjoy a full semester’s worth of movie offerings on the Cornell University campus.By Mary Fessenden, Director, Cornell CinemaARCHITECT: William Adams Delano; murals by J. Monroe HewlettOPENED: 1925 Still in useLISTEN HERE
Wharton Studio, Inc.
Some 100 years ago this “biggest little city” of Ithaca was a bustling movie-making town, home to the Wharton, Inc. Studios. Filmmaker Theodore Wharton–known as Ted–came to Ithaca in 1912, sent by the Chicago-based Essanay Film Co. to capture scenes of everyday campus life at Cornell University. Wharton filmed a football game and strolled through campus, captivated by the natural beauty of the gorges and what he said were “students from all over the world in their native garb.” As a filmmaker, Ted saw great cinematic potential in these beautiful backdrops.Ted Wharton returned to Ithaca in 1914 and leased 45 acres of Renwick Park (now Stewart Park). The lease included a number of buildings designed in 1896 by architects Clinton Vivian and Arthur Gibb who were apprentices to Ithaca’s most famous architect William Henry Miller. One of the buildings, a former dance pavilion and vaudeville stage, was where the Wharton brothers based their production facility–Wharton, Inc. Studios. Soon after, Ted’s brother Leopold–Leo, as he was known–joined him in Ithaca.The city afforded the Whartons–who wrote, directed, and produced their films and also distributed their movies–authentic natural settings and also an urban landscape, with downtown Ithaca only a few minutes away by car from Renwick Park.For a few years, the Wharton Studio was prolific and financially successful, mostly due to the success of its popular serials. However, by the late 1910s, the Whartons were mired in financial problems and had issues with their distributors. In 1919 the Whartons packed it in. Grossman Pictures then moved into the Renwick Park studio building and produced a film called A Million Dollar Reward. Subsequently, in 1920, the New York State-funded Cayuga Pictures leased the building and produced If Women Only Knew, which was the last movie produced in Ithaca. All filmmaking in Renwick Park ceased in 1921, and the City of Ithaca purchased the former movie studio property as a public park. It was renamed Stewart Park in honor of Mayor Edwin Stewart.Today the Wharton Studio Museum preserves and celebrates the role Ithaca played in the history of American filmmaking. Annual events, including Silent Movie Under the Stars, Silent Movie Month, Quiet on the Set! Youth film festival, and additional screenings and exhibits broaden awareness of this unique history.Central to Wharton Studio Museum’s mission is the development of the lakefront section of the former Wharton Studio building in Stewart Park as the Wharton Studio Park Center, with exhibits, a café, and a lakeside terrace.ARCHITECT: Clinton Vivian and Arthur GibbOPENED: 1896 Converted to public park facilitiesLISTEN HERE
