Image: Somerville Theatre Hobbs Building Sign

Description: The Somerville Theater is a movie theater and concert venue in Davis Square, located just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, in the city of Somerville in the United States of America. The Somerville Theater and the Hobbs Building it is a part of was built in 1914 by Joseph Hobbs and designed by the firm of Funk & Wilcox of Boston. Designed for stage shows, vaudeville, opera, and that new fad, motion pictures, the theater was only one of the highlights of the Hobbs Building, which also contained a basement café, basement bowling alley and billiards hall, the theater lobbies and ten storefronts on the ground floor, and the Hobbs Crystal Ballroom, a 700 person dance hall, on the second floor. The second and third floors also contained office space for lease. In 1915, the Somerville Theater Players began their stock company presentation of weekly play performances. Among the notable players who came up at the Somerville were Tallulah Bankhead, Kay Corbett, and Francis X. Bushman. Future film director Busby Berkeley (famous for 42nd Street and other stylized musicals of the 1930s) directed many shows at the Somerville in the mid 1920s.
Title: Somerville Theatre Hobbs Building Sign
Credit: Own work
Author: Myersj
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License: CC BY-SA 3.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
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