New movie theater on the Boulevard When the building housing Richmond's newest movie theater was built, movies had not even been invented.
The 17-screen Movieland at Boulevard Square opens tomorrow, the first new movie theater in the city of Richmond in 15 years. The building it is in at 1301 N. Boulevard -- on the corner of Leigh Street -- was built in 1887 to construct locomotives.
Movies are generally considered to have been invented in 1895, when the first moving image was projected on a wall.
The theater is part of a small chain, Bow Tie Cinemas, owned by the father-son team of Charley and Ben Moss. That company, based in Aspen, Colo., and New York City, owns 17 theaters along the East Coast from Schenectady, N.Y., to Richmond, plus one theater in Basalt, Colo.
Bow Tie theaters share several distinctions, said the Mosses, who were in town recently to promote Movieland. Taken together, they come down to being service-oriented, Charley Moss said.
Specifically, they do not show commercials on their screens before their movies start, although they do show trailers or previews. To make up for income lost by not having the commercials, the company relies on customer loyalty, Charley Moss said.
Like the other Bow Tie cinemas,Movieland will have a café offering such items as pizza, pretzels, cheeseburgers, french fries and jalapeño poppers -- "all those things that are between a snack and a meal that you can take into the theaters," said Ben Moss.
Beer and wine will also be available -- the only theater in the Richmond area to offer them.
The theater's 17 auditoriums seat between about 150 and 300 patrons apiece in custom-designed reclining seats with wood backs and leather armrests. Most of the auditoriums will show general-interest first-run movies, although a couple will be designated for art and foreign films. The independent movie "Wendy and Lucy," starring Michelle Williams and Will Patton, and the long-delayed French film "I've Loved You So Long," starring Kristin Scott Thomas, are scheduled to open tomorrow.
On Friday and Saturday at 11:30 p.m. -- not quite midnight, but the idea is the same -- the cinema will show what it calls Insomnia Theater. These are cult films, such as "Airplane!" and "The Shining," and the most-popular late-night offering, "The Goonies." "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" will play every other Friday and Saturday, with a live show every other Saturday.
On Sunday mornings at 11, the theater will show Hollywood classics and also sell mimosas -- a combination of champagne and orange juice. Beginning this Sunday, the first four weekly classics will be "The Wizard of Oz," "Citizen Kane," "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca."
Tickets to Movies & Mimosas will be $5.50, as will tickets to the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" without the live show. Tickets to "Rocky Horror" with the live show are $7.50. Regular admission is $9.75, with $7 matinees.
The Mosses first thought about opening a theater in Richmond when they were on a bicycling trip to the Shenandoah Valley, and they stayed overnight here.
"There was a sense of a need that was unfulfilled in the city," Ben Moss said.
The only other theaters inside the city limits are the Westhampton Cinemas and the second-run Byrd Theatre, both of which are within a few miles of the new Movieland. The last theater to open in the city was the short-lived art-house Grace Street Cinemas.
The building's railroad-based origins are honored with giant pictures of Virginia-built locomotives, including one that was built in the building, and rusted tools and other objects that were found on the grounds are mounted on display. A set of train tracks was unearthed heading toward the former Broad Street Station (now the Science Museum of Virginia), and a portion has been preserved.
"To the extent we could, we kept every bit of steel, every bit of brick work," Charley Moss said.
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