New England Special Collection

In the 1940s members of Loew’s sales team were dispatched throughout regions in New England. Their job was to survey the operating theatres at the time to gather data on them such as town population, theatre name, capacity, and when it was built, who were the typical patrons, and if they were showing MGM movies. Importantly the surveyor took a photo of the buildings exterior. 

This was a time after the theatre construction boom but before the waves of closings and demolitions that have erased large numbers of theatres across the country. With these surveys we can see the great number of movie houses that were in what seemed like every single small town in the US. In some cases this may be the only photographic evidence of these long gone buildings. 

THS has over 600 in our collections. Head over to the THS online catalog and type in quotations “New England Special Collection” in the keyword search to browse the collection and see all of the survey cards.