Hampton Beach’s Lost Cinema: A Century of Fires at the Olympia Theatre

The Olympia Theatre opened in June 1913 near the intersection of C Street and Ocean Boulevard in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. The theater offered 90 minutes of entertainment for 10 cents and was one of several movie houses serving the growing seaside resort. William J. Bigley operated the Olympia during its early years. The theater competed with the Casino Theatre and the Barn Theatre, which also offered motion pictures to the thousands of summer visitors arriving at Hampton Beach.

On September 23, 1915, a major fire swept through the beachfront business district, destroying approximately ten acres of buildings. The Olympia was among the losses, along with the recently constructed Strand Theatre, several hotels, stores, and cottages. Bigley also arranged movie screenings at Hampton’s town hall, drawing complaints from the local Women’s Christian Temperance Union about the films being shown. The Olympia was rebuilt for the 1916 season, with the replacement theater enlarged by 36 feet and seating approximately 800 patrons. Unfortunately, the rebuilt theater was destroyed in another devastating beachfront fire on June 28, 1921.

The Olympia was rebuilt again and continued operating as a movie theater for decades. A surviving photograph from 1941 shows the theater’s facade and marquee. Cinema Treasures records another fire around 1950, followed by the construction of the Surf Theater, a 600-seat movie house which retained the Olympia name’s connection to the site. The precise reconstruction chronology deserves further archival verification, particularly because the beachfront experienced another major fire on July 14, 1950.

Following the Surf Theater’s closure as a cinema, its former entrance was used as a hot dog restaurant known as Bucky’s. On February 26, 2010, a five-alarm fire broke out at the nearby Surf Hotel during a powerful coastal storm. Winds exceeding 60 miles per hour helped spread the flames through the block, destroying the former theater property and several neighboring businesses, including Mrs. Mitchell’s Country Shoppe and the Happy Hampton Arcade. The fire ended nearly a century of movie theater history associated with the site.