Movie Houses

These long, post-holiday winter nights are the ideal time for watching videos. Yet for all the convenience of dropping by a local video shop and finding a film that seems to fit the mood, I still miss my grind-'em-out neighborhood movie house.Don't ask me precisely what the show was. In those flickering days of a movie marquee at every crossroads, the stars and the movies were not as important as the act of getting out and going -- as often as possible.There is a lot to recommend going into a video store and selecting from what seems like a thousand choices.

The sight of a few ladders outside the Senator Theatre did not prepare me for the scope of the restoration project that is transforming this Govans-Belvedere Square landmark, a Baltimore treasure being taken apart and reassembled. There will be three newly constructed boutique theaters, too, making a four-screen complex. The $3.5 million infusion of much-needed capital improvements comes not a minute too soon. The 1939 movie house is a favorite address of many film fans, but let's face it: The beloved Senator was shabby.

With the addition of just one new movie house - November's opening of the Landmark Theatres in Harbor East - the number of Baltimore theaters skyrocketed by a whopping 33 percent. How times have changed. Over the past century, Baltimore has had more than 100 movie houses, from the palatial - the Grand, the Metropolitan, the Northwood, the Patterson - to the neighborly - the Blue Bell, the Community, the Plaza. But beginning in the 1960s, theaters began flocking to the suburbs. Parking was easier; the huge movie palaces of the silent era became too expensive to maintain; neighborhoods became places to move away from, rather than grow up in. Today, those theaters are gone, but many of the buildings remain - ghosts of a city's cinematic past.

If James "Buzz" Cusack and his daughter, Kathleen Lyon, have their way, they'll be cutting ribbons by Christmas for a restored Senator Theatre that will preserve the original cinema and add three screens and a small restaurant. Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Tuesday that they would receive $300,000 in a 2012 Sustainable Communities Tax Credit — administered by the Maryland Historical Trust and known previously as the Historic Tax Credit — to rehabilitate the movie house, a North Baltimore landmark since 1939.

North Baltimore's landmark Senator Theatre was showcased yesterday in the National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual list of America's 11 most endangered historic places, described as a classic example of grand -- but vanishing -- American movie houses. Historic movie theaters were listed -- along with Midwestern prairie churches and barns, a California temple built by Chinese immigrants in 1880 and Jackson Ward, a historically black neighborhood in Richmond, Va. -- to warn that such places are slowly dying.

Reisterstown-based R/C Theatres is selling seven of its 18 movie houses to Regal Entertainment Group, the country's largest theater chain, for $31 million, company executives said yesterday. Four of the theaters being sold are in Maryland, including Eastpoint 10 in Baltimore, Carrolltowne 6 in Eldersburg, Valley Mall 16 in Hagerstown and Westview 16 in Frederick. The other three are in Culpeper, Va., Carlisle, Pa., and Pinellas Park, Fla. The sale totals 76 screens, about half of the number privately owned R/C operates in five states.

Joseph Armando Liberto, a 54-year veteran of Baltimore movie houses who managed the Stanley, once Baltimore's largest cinema, died of Alzheimer's disease complications Sept. 19 at the Northwest Hospital Center. The Catonsville Manor resident was 82. Born in Baltimore and raised on Greene Street in downtown Baltimore, he attended St. John the Baptist Parochial School and was a 1944 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School. While in high school, he worked summers in his family's Lexington Market produce business.

POCOMOKE CITY - Larry Moseley and Carey Reece wander about the cavernous old Mar-Va theater every chance they get. Standing beneath the 50-foot-high pressed-tin ceiling, they try to look past the water damage caused by a leaky roof, shrug off the holes in the hardwood floors and ignore the stray cats that have taken up residence. With a little creative fund raising, they say, the 700-seat Mar-Va can be put right. On the Eastern Shore - from Cape Charles to Church Hill, Chincoteague to Chestertown and half a dozen towns in between - people such as Moseley and Reece are restoring old theaters to their former glory.

The sight of a few ladders outside the Senator Theatre did not prepare me for the scope of the restoration project that is transforming this Govans-Belvedere Square landmark, a Baltimore treasure being taken apart and reassembled. There will be three newly constructed boutique theaters, too, making a four-screen complex. The $3.5 million infusion of much-needed capital improvements comes not a minute too soon. The 1939 movie house is a favorite address of many film fans, but let's face it: The beloved Senator was shabby.

Senator owner Tom Kiefaber's passion for historic movie houses has earned him another round of national kudos, with the National Trust for Historic Preservation giving him its 2003 "Business Leadership" award. Kiefaber, whose grandfather Frank Durkee once owned a chain of some 40 Baltimore-area movie houses, has spent more than a decade fighting to keep the 64-year-old Senator - the last of those theaters still under family ownership - open. That hasn't always been easy, given the frequent cash-flow problems inherent in running a single-screen theater in this age of the megaplex.

Joseph Armando Liberto, a 54-year veteran of Baltimore movie houses who managed the Stanley, once Baltimore's largest cinema, died of Alzheimer's disease complications Sept. 19 at the Northwest Hospital Center. The Catonsville Manor resident was 82. Born in Baltimore and raised on Greene Street in downtown Baltimore, he attended St. John the Baptist Parochial School and was a 1944 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School. While in high school, he worked summers in his family's Lexington Market produce business.

City officials are moving ahead with plans to sell or lease the historic Senator Theatre to an operator who would keep it running as a movie theater or convert the 70-year-old landmark to a performing arts venue. In a request for proposals issued Monday, the Baltimore Development Corp. said it is seeking plans that would keep the 900-seat theater active, allow it to serve as an anchor for nearby communities and maintain the building's art deco exterior and interior features. The city purchased the financially troubled theater's mortgage in May after the owner, Thomas Kiefaber, was unable to make payments on a $1.2 million loan that the city had partially guaranteed.

The Senator Theatre is a cultural anchor and community asset that's worth saving. And the push now is for the city to rescue the 70-year-old landmark. But the city shouldn't be expected to go it alone. A move by the administration of Mayor Sheila Dixon to avert the April 20 auction of the theater should be the first in a series of steps to have the theater reopened and preserved as a single-screen movie house. The theater, which is now closed, needs this intervention. Its owner is facing foreclosure because its debts exceed $2 million.

For almost two decades, the story of the Senator Theatre has been Baltimore's longest-running cliffhanger. Will owner Tom Kiefaber be able to stare down the multiplexes and continue showing first-run films? Will the theater's creditors call in their loans? Will a deep-pockets benefactor emerge, with enough cash to keep the movies unspooling and the popcorn popping? Will the city's oldest continually operating movie theater live to show films another day? After years of nerve-wracking anticipation, it looks like the final chapter is about to be played out. Kiefaber, some $1.2 million in debt, has been frantically searching for a nonprofit organization that would be able to take over the theater.

Days after the city offered to save the Senator Theatre by turning it into a nonprofit business, owner Tom Kiefaber said he is working with the mayor's office to finalize the deal "as soon as possible." But gaining nonprofit status would likely mean big changes at the historic theater. As a nonprofit, it would not just show movies; it would need to provide educational and cultural programming as well. The new status would also mean a new role for Kiefaber, who would give up day-to-day control of the movie house, which has been run by his family for decades.

With the addition of just one new movie house - November's opening of the Landmark Theatres in Harbor East - the number of Baltimore theaters skyrocketed by a whopping 33 percent. How times have changed. Over the past century, Baltimore has had more than 100 movie houses, from the palatial - the Grand, the Metropolitan, the Northwood, the Patterson - to the neighborly - the Blue Bell, the Community, the Plaza. But beginning in the 1960s, theaters began flocking to the suburbs. Parking was easier; the huge movie palaces of the silent era became too expensive to maintain; neighborhoods became places to move away from, rather than grow up in. Today, those theaters are gone, but many of the buildings remain - ghosts of a city's cinematic past.

I SUSPECT that I'm not alone in lamenting the state of today's movie theaters. It's not just that movie houses today are filthy (popcorn, crushed paper cups, candy boxes and paper bags litter the floor). And it's not that so many of the movies are raunchy, lacking almost any artistic value. What really bothers me is that there are so few theaters right in one's neighborhood anymore.Of course, the key reason for the death of the neighborhood movie house was our affluence. For years, many Baltimoreans went to neighborhood theaters to keep cool and find entertainment within walking distance of home.

MANY PEOPLE who are too young to recall what it was like to live through a blistering hot Baltimore summer without air conditioning. Relief from those sultry, airless days came slowly, beginning in the late 1920s and escalating in the 1950s.Among the first public buildings to employ air conditioning were the big downtown department stores. A 1931 item in Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s monthly newsletter announced that Stewart & Co. department store had air-conditioned its basement.In 1934, Hutzler Bros.

I received a e-mail from an old friend, McNair Taylor, a retired city elementary teacher and Northwest Baltimore resident. He wanted to know why I hadn't included black-patronized film houses in last week's column. My short answer was segregation. In the heyday of my movie-going, the city's places of public accommodation were not open to all. In 1960 Baltimore, I mainly patronized neighborhood movie houses in Waverly and along North Avenue. Integration was coming, but it hadn't yet arrived.

AMC Owings Mills 17 The Senator Theatre 5904 York Road / 410-435-8338 / senator.com The single-screen theater plays 1940s jazz tunes before showings, which fits, given its classic appearance. Tickets --$8 for everyone, and the theater accepts cash only. Children younger than 5 are not allowed. Popcorn --$3.50, small; $4.50, medium; $5.50, large Sodas --$2.50, small; $3.50, medium, $4.50, large Parking --The Senator shares the parking lot behind Staples on York Road, right up the street.