The Broadway Theatre was built in 1919 and opened around 1920 at 420 West Broadway in South Boston. Designed by the Boston firm of Blackall, Clapp & Whittemore, the theater was built for vaudeville and motion pictures. During construction, it was referred to as the Powers Broadway Theatre, and a Robert Morton Symphonic organ was ordered for the new house. By 1921, the Broadway was open and operating as one of South Boston’s neighborhood theaters.
The Broadway had a seating capacity of roughly 1,750, with seats on both the main floor and balcony. An MGM theater report from 1941 noted that the Broadway had been showing MGM films for more than 15 years. After a fire, the theater was rebuilt in 1938 according to plans by architect Clarence Kivett, and it continued showing films for several more decades.
The Broadway closed in the 1980s and sat vacant for years. In 2017, the Boston Planning and Development Agency approved an $18 million redevelopment of the site into a six-story mixed-use building with 42 residential units, retail space, and parking. The auditorium was demolished, while portions of the original West Broadway entrance and lobby were retained as part of the new development.
Today, the site is home to The Mezz, a 42-unit condominium building. Most of the Broadway Theatre is gone, but part of its entrance still survives on West Broadway. For a theater that spent decades closed and facing an uncertain future, that is more than a lot of old neighborhood theaters got.
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