545 Washington Street,
No one has favorited this theater yet
The Bijou Theatre opened on December 11, 1882 as a “Parlor Opera House” featuring Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Iolanthe”.
It was located on the second floor of an annex to the next-door Adams House hotel. It replaced an earlier theatre in the same building that at various times was called the Lion, the Mechanics Institute, the Melodeon Varieties, the New Melodeon, and the Gaiety.
B.F. Keith took over the Bijou in 1886 and began to stage vaudeville shows there. Later he converted it to show movies and renamed it the Bijou Dream. At one point it was also called the Intown.
The Bijou continued operating into the 1940s, but after the horrific Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire of 1942, Boston enacted stricter fire laws that doomed the Bijou. Its exits led not to the street but rather to two neighboring theatres, the old BF Keith Theatre (later called the Normandie and the Laffmovie) and the newer Keith Memorial (much later called the Savoy and the Opera House).
Eventually the Bijou was razed to the orchestra and stage floors, which became the roof of the stores below.
Until a few years ago, the former Bijou entrance was a storefront containing a pinball and video amusements arcade.
Most of what remained of the Bijou building was demolished in 2008, leaving only its front facade standing. Emerson College is redeveloping the Bijou property, along with the adjoining Paramount Theatre, into a new theatre and dormitory complex.
(The above information comes from Donald C. King’s “A Historical Survey of the Theatres of Boston”, published in the Third Quarter 1974 issue of Marquee, the journal of the Theatre Historical Society.)
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater