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Former names | Cranford Theatre, New Branford Theatre, Stern's New Cranford |
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Address | 25 North Avenue West, Cranford, NJ 07016 |
Coordinates | 40°39′20″N74°18′22″W / 40.6556°N 74.3061°W |
Public transit | Cranford station |
Type | Movie theater, small live performing-arts stage added to front of screening room in 2020s |
Screens | 5 |
Construction | |
Opened | 1926 |
Renovated | 2019 |
Website | |
cranfordtheater.com |
The Cranford Theater is an independently owned movie theater in Cranford, New Jersey, United States that has been in operation since 1926. [1] [2]
The Cranford Theater first opened in 1926. With a seating capacity of 1,300, the theater was equipped with an $18,000 Wurlitzer pipe organ with two manual and eight ranks. [3] The inaugural screening featured the silent movie Padlocked starring Noah Beery, Louise Dresser, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Initially facing some naming-conflict issues, the theater opened as the New Branford Theatre, but the matter was resolved at the beginning of 1927. The signage was updated, replacing the "B"s with "C"s, and on January 27, 1927, the theater became known as the New Cranford Theatre. [4]
Throughout its history, the ownership of the Cranford Theater has changed hands. [5] During the 1980s and 1990s, it was under the ownership of Cineplex Odeon and had two screens. Later, in 1998, the theater was purchased by the owner of the Rialto Theater in the neighboring town of Westfield and was converted into a five-screen cinema. After additional changes of ownership, it reopened as the Cranford Theater after renovations in 2019. [6]
The theater is home to the Cranford Film Festival and Garden State Film Festival. It offers screenings for other New Jersey film festivals. [7] [8] [9] The theater added a small live performing arts stage to the venue in the early 2020s. [10] [11]
A movie theater, cinema (English), or cinema hall, also known as a movie house, picture house, picture theater or simply theater, is a business that contains auditoria for viewing films for public entertainment. Most are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing tickets.
Cranford is a township in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, located 18 miles (29 km) southwest of Manhattan. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 23,847, an increase of 1,222 (+5.4%) from the 2010 census count of 22,625, which in turn reflected an increase of 47 (+0.2%) from the 22,578 counted in the 2000 census.
A drive-in theater or drive-in cinema is a form of cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor movie screen, a projection booth, a concession stand, and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers can view movies from the privacy and comfort of their cars. Some drive-ins have small playgrounds for children and a few picnic tables or benches.
The Cinerama Dome is a movie theater located at 6360 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Designed to exhibit widescreen Cinerama films, it opened November 7, 1963. The original developer was William R. Forman, founder of Pacific Theatres. The Cinerama Dome continued as a leading first-run theater, most recently as part of the ArcLight Hollywood complex, until it closed temporarily in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in California. The ArcLight chain closed permanently in April 2021, with the theater never having reopened. In June 2022, it was announced that there were plans to reopen it and the former ArcLight Hollywood under a new name, Cinerama Hollywood.
A movie palace is any of the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opening every year between 1925 and 1930. With the advent of television, movie attendance dropped, while the rising popularity of large multiplex chains in the 1980s and 1990s signaled the obsolescence of single-screen theaters. Many movie palaces were razed or converted into multiple-screen venues or performing arts centers, though some have undergone restoration and reopened to the public as historic buildings.
Landmark Theatres is a movie theatre chain founded in 1974 in the United States. It was formerly dedicated to exhibiting and marketing independent and foreign films. Landmark consists of 34 theatres with 176 screens in 24 markets. It is known for both its historic and newer, more modern theatres. Helmed by its President Kevin Holloway, Landmark Theatres is part of Cohen Media Group.
The Ziegfeld Theatre was a single-screen movie theater located at 141 West 54th Street in midtown Manhattan in New York City. It opened in 1969 and closed in 2016. The theater was named in honor of the original Ziegfeld Theatre (1927–1966), which was built by the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.
The Seattle Cinerama Theatre is a landmark movie theater in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. The theater opened in 1963 and was renovated in the 1990s after its acquisition by Paul Allen. The Cinerama was closed in May 2020. At the time of its 2020 closure, it was one of only three movie theaters in the world capable of showing three-panel Cinerama films. In 2023, the theater was purchased by the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and reopened on December 14, 2023 as SIFF Cinema Downtown due to trademark issues with the "Cinerama" name.
Cranford is an active commuter railroad station in the township of Cranford, Union County, New Jersey. Trains operate between High Bridge and Newark Penn Station on New Jersey Transit's Raritan Valley Line. The next station east is Roselle Park while west is Garwood. Cranford station contains two side platforms to service three tracks and is accessible for handicapped persons under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Bernie Wagenblast is a transportation journalist, radio personality and voice-over artist. She is the founder and editor of the Transportation Communications Newsletter. The newsletter originated as a discussion group in June 1998, evolving into its current format shortly thereafter. She also edits The AASHTO Daily Transportation Update, published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and hosts AASHTO's ETAP Podcast and the ITE Talks Transportation podcast for the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
ArcLight Cinemas was an American movie theater chain that operated from 2002 to 2021. It was owned by The Decurion Corporation, which was also the parent company of Pacific Theatres. The ArcLight chain opened in 2002 as a single theater, the ArcLight Hollywood in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and later expanded to eleven locations in California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois.
An atmospheric theatre is a type of movie palace design which was popular in the late 1920s. Atmospheric theatres were designed and decorated to evoke the feeling of a particular time and place for patrons, through the use of projectors, architectural elements and ornamentation that evoked a sense of being outdoors. This was intended to make the patron a more active participant in the setting.
The Garden State Film Festival is a film festival in the United States held in Asbury Park and Cranford, New Jersey. which debuts more than 200 independent films annually over four days each spring.
The Paradise Theater, formerly Loew's Paradise Theatre, is a movie palace-type theater located at 2417 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, New York. Constructed in 1929 at the height of grand movie theaters, in the later 20th century the building was used also for live entertainment. It was leased in 2012 for use by the World Changers Church International New York for founding a local congregation.
Bernie Anderson Jr. is a silent film music composer, organist and orchestrator. He has presented live accompaniments for silent films, with theatre organ and piano since 1995. He is also active in the preservation and restoration of Movie Palaces, Theatre organs and Classic Film.
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The Princeton Garden Theatre is a historic movie theater on Nassau Street in Princeton, New Jersey. Owned by Princeton University, it is operated by Renew Theaters, a non-profit which manages golden-age movie theaters. The theater shows first run movies of high artistic quality as well as classic and foreign language films, and Saturday kid's matinees. The Garden live broadcasts performances from the Royal National Theatre and host talks and lectures from filmmakers including Terrence Malick and Peter Saraf. In March 2017 the Garden was named New Jersey's best movie theater by NJ.com. It offers screenings for a number of area film festivals.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on certain films in the early 2020s, mirroring its impacts across all arts sectors. Across the world, and to varying degrees, cinemas and movie theaters were closed, festivals were cancelled or postponed, and film releases were moved to future dates or delayed indefinitely. Due to cinemas and movie theaters closing, the global box office dropped by billions of dollars, streaming saw a significant increase in popularity, and the stock of film exhibitors dropped dramatically. Many blockbusters originally scheduled to be released by mid-March 2020 were postponed or canceled around the world, with film productions also being halted. This in turn created openings for independent cinema productions to receive wider exposure.
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