#BIJOU THEATER EUGENE MOVIE#
#BIJOU THEATER EUGENE SERIES#

#BIJOU THEATER EUGENE MOVIE#

Forty years after what was then called the Eugene Renewal Agency razed the Heilig - Eugene’s oldest movie theater - the Bijou Metro will open with the aid of the current Eugene Urban Renewal Agency. Today, the city is host to three theaters: the Regal Valley River Center Stadium 15, the David Minor Theater and the Bijou. When “talkies” first hit the silver screen in the late ’20s, Eugene had five theaters (the Heilig, the Rex, the Colonial, the Eugene State Theater and the McDonald), and by 1980, more than 10 theaters lit up the town with their marquees. For now, ticket prices will remain the same as the original Bijou.

#BIJOU THEATER EUGENE SERIES#

Outfitted with four auditoriums - two 40-seaters and two 20-seaters - the Metro will curate film series (think kung fu, old classics, ’80s action flicks), expand and tailor programming for Eugene audiences (seven-days-a-week matinees, a screen devoted to classics) and grow partnerships with the community through events like DisOrient and the UO’s Film on Film series. The First National Tap House, an English-style pub, will open next door and connect directly to the theater.

Opening in spring 2013, the new Bijou Metro will serve local beer, wine and a limited gourmet menu. digital rendering courtesy Master Capital Management “We can’t just offer a seat to sit in for five bucks anymore.”ĭigital rendering of the plans for the new Bijou Metro. “It’s pretty crucial that movie theaters actually offer some sort of experience,” says Ed Schiessl, who co-owns and operates Bijou Art Cinemas with Louise Thomas and Jamie Hosler. But in today’s ever-changing media landscape, it may be harder than ever to lure would-be moviegoers away from their HD flat-screen-equipped living rooms, where movies can be found for little to no cost via iTunes, Netflix or BitTorrent, and into the theater. Over 70 years later, decades after the last downtown Eugene movie house closed, Bijou Art Cinemas is opening a second location at Willamette and Broadway with the hope of helping revitalize the city’s core through cinema and culture again. OK, they were actually local actors hired by the theater for the “Hollywood Premiere and Follies,” a show replicating the Hollywood glamour of an opening night at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater and slated by The Register-Guard as “one of the biggest social and theatrical events ever seen in this city.” The firm was founded in 1898 and dissolved in 1913.Downtown Eugene: On a spring evening in 1938, Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, Ginger Rogers and the Three Stooges could be seen posing for the paparazzi under the bright lights of the Heilig Theater marquee where the Hult Center now stands. The PSTOS page for the Rex says that the house “…originally had a 2/10 Estey organ (opus #1078) installed in 1912.”įinding the identities of the architects, Lewis & Lewis, has been rather tedious, there having also been two other architects with that surname active in Portland around this time, both of them quite active, but it turns out that the less-well-known construction-architecture firm Lewis & Lewis consisted of English-born builder William P.

is of Spanish mission design and will cost $30,000.”Notices about the project in other issues of the journal indicate that it was located on Willamette Street, and that the theater would be operated by J.J. Heckart of this city, and the brick and stucco work will be done by C.S. The Rex Theatre must have been this project described in the June 8, 1912, issue of Pacific Builder & Engineer: “Eugene, Or.: Lewis & Lewis, archts., Portland, have awarded the cont.

Bijou theater eugene