The Dedham Community Theatre opened in Dedham Square in November 1927. The two-story Colonial Revival building at 580 High Street was designed by architect Harold R. Duffie and contained the theater along with stores and offices. An early advertisement promoted a single-floor auditorium with seating for 1,100 people, an unusually large neighborhood theater for a suburban town.
The Community arrived near the end of the silent-film era. Within only a few years, sound pictures had taken over the industry. By 1941, the theater was operated by Ralph E. Snider Theatrical Enterprises and had become an established part of Dedham Square. An MGM theater report from the same period described the building as being in good condition and noted that it had been showing MGM films for more than a decade.
Unlike most of the neighborhood theaters built around Boston during the 1920s, the Dedham Community Theatre never disappeared. The large auditorium was eventually divided into two screens, and the theater shifted toward independent, foreign, and art-house films. Paul McMurtry, who had worked at the theater as a teenager, purchased it in 2002. The opening of the large Cinema de Lux complex at nearby Legacy Place created some serious competition, but the older theater survived.
Nearly a century after opening, the Dedham Community Theatre is still showing movies under its original marquee in Dedham Square.
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