April 2, 1902 – The first theater built specifically to show “movies” opens its doors in Los Angeles.
It all begins in the late 1890’s. Thomas Edison had invented the Vitascope – a creative, new way of projecting pictures onto a large screen – and by the turn-of-the-century, “movie houses” were beginning to pop up around the country. The first theater built specifically to show “movies” opened its door on April 2, 1902, in Los Angeles, and it was an instant success. In 1905, Pittsburgh movie theater owners – Harry Davis and John Harris – introduced 5-cent Nickelodeon movies, and two years later, by 1907, Iowa City had at least three “movie” theaters to call her own.
But that was just the beginning. By 1917 – ten years later – downtown Iowa City had experienced thirteen different movie houses in eleven different locations – all within just a few blocks of each other!
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