paid film exhibition in the united states began on 14 april 1894, when andrew m. holland installed kinetoscope peep-show machines at his phonograph store at 1155 broadway in new york. storefront theatres followed: thomas lincoln tally's electric theatre opened in los angeles in 1902, projecting onto a muslin sheet with a box office by the door.
harry davis and john p. harris opened the nickelodeon on smithfield street in pittsburgh on 19 june 1905, charging five cents for continuous shows, and the name became generic. the number of nickelodeons in the united states doubled between 1907 and 1908 to about 8,000, and by 1910 an estimated 26 million americans attended them each week.
larger, more comfortable houses drove the nickelodeons out. the regent theater, designed by thomas lamb, opened in harlem in february 1913 and is usually called the first movie palace; lamb's strand theatre opened on broadway in 1914 at a cost of one million dollars. over 4,000 palaces opened between 1914 and 1922, many of them by the chicago firm rapp and rapp, which designed the chicago, uptown and oriental theatres. sid grauman built the first west coast palace, los angeles' million dollar theater, in 1918.
the major studios owned the biggest chains. loew's controlled mgm and the largest american circuit; warner bros. bought the stanley theaters in 1928; the keith-albee-orpheum houses became part of rko the same year. the 1948 paramount decision ordered the studios to sell their theaters, and many palaces closed or became second-run houses.
drive-ins were patented by richard m. hollingshead jr. in 1932 and first opened on 6 june 1933 in pennsauken, new jersey. their numbers rose from 155 in 1947 to 4,151 in 1951, peaked above 4,000 in the late 1950s, and fell to about 389 by 2013. the multiplex, one building with several auditoriums, and the larger megaplex replaced single-screen houses from the 1980s; by 2004 only about a quarter of american theaters had one screen, and the average site had 6.1.
related profiles; Double Feature Practice, Film Presentation Formats, The Golden Age of Hollywood
sources; movie palace, nickelodeon, drive-in theater, multiplex, studio system
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