This is a portion of an article in today’s Buffalo News; the rest of the article, including a photograph of the movie theater, can be found at: http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/214196.html

“Buffalo lays claim to the air conditioner, grain elevator, windshield wiper and pacemaker. It may be time to add another: The first motion picture theater.

Mitchell Mark and his younger brother, Moe, opened Vitascope Hall in the basement of Ellicott Square in October 1896. Moviegoers entered through the Marks’ first-floor Edisonia Phonograph Parlor, an early penny arcade using inventions of Thomas Alva Edison’s factory.

“This is one of those very hazy areas of theater history. Really, no one can say with any certainty what was the very first purpose-built movie theater,” said Karen Colizzi Noonan, president of the Theatre Historical Society in Elmhurst, Ill., which records and preserves the history of America’s theaters.

“Given the date, it is more than probable that this one was the first in the U.S. We have no evidence of any earlier movie theater.”

Craig Morrison, a theater historian and author of the 2005 compendium “Theaters,” also said it’s plausible.

“It was incredibly early for someone to have the idea of a stand-alone piece of entertainment, but there it is in the paper,” Morrison said, referring to newspaper clippings at the time.

The research is the result of efforts by local movie buffs, including Edward Summer, president of Buffalo International Film Festival, and Ranjit Sandhu, a former Buffalonian and author of the forthcoming book, “Buffalo: The Birthplace of the Movie Theater.”

The rediscovery of Vitascope Hall also underscores the more than a dozen early movie theaters from Buffalo’s past that still remain. Only Shea’s Performing Arts Center, the 1926 movie palace, is still a theater.

Heather Sabin, Academy Awards archivist in Los Angeles, thinks Buffalo should capitalize on this forgotten history.

“You have such an opportunity to say movie theaters as we know them really were born in Buffalo, and to then be able to point to a handful of them, still standing, and hopefully one day restored,” Sabin said.”
Summer recently found evidence of Vitascope Hall in a scrapbook belonging to the building’s owner, developer Carl Paladino. A photo of the building with the Edisonia entrance also hung on the wall.

The theater is believed to have been located in what’s now a carpenter’s shop under Crinzi & Gullo Jewelers reachable by a spiral staircase.

Paladino said there are plans to install a window display in the building’s atrium commemorating the Mark brothers and their groundbreaking theater, with artifacts and possibly a computer-aided diagram of what the theater looked like. He also wants to erect a plaque outside the building.

“It was pretty cool finding out,” Paladino said. “I thought [Summer] was nuts when he first came in, but when we went through the old scrapbooks he found the picture of the theater, and articles from that era.”

The Vitascope, an early film projector, made its debut in April 1894 at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta.

The inventors had a falling out, and sold the rights to Edison, who insisted on being credited with the invention and that it be renamed the “Vitascope.” Its first commercial screening was in April 1896.”