page_title: Bijou Theatre (Boston)
section_title: The Bijou
hierarchical_section_title: Bijou Theatre (Boston) / The Bijou
caption_attribution_description: Bijou Theatre, Boston
context_page_description: The Bijou Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, occupied the second floor of 545 Washington Street near today's Theatre District. Architect George Wetherell designed the space, described by a contemporary reviewer as "dainty." Proprietors included Edward Hastings, George Tyler, and B.F. Keith. Around the 1900s, it featured a "staircase of heavy glass under which flowed an illuminated waterfall."
  The Bijou "closed 31 December 1943 and was razed in 1951." The building's facade still exists. It is currently a pending Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission.
context_section_description: The new theatre opened on December 18, 1882 with the Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert (Gilbert and Sullivan) comic opera Iolanthe. By  September 27, 1886, the theatre became owned by B.F. Keith and George R. Batcheller. On March 24, 1894, Keith opened a theatre next the Bijou named "B.F. Keith’s Theatre". In 1901, it was renamed the "Bijou Opera House". The Bijou would later be named "Bijou Dream" when it became a movie house in 1927, and also became known as Intown sometime after that.
  The Bijou was a distinct theatre for a couple of reasons. The Bijou was the first theatre in the United States to be elementarily lighted by electricity, which Thomas Edison personally installed and supervised. It also was unique for the fact that it did not have a traditional exit to the outside. Since it was on the second floor, the exits led to the lobbies of the two surrounding theatres, the B.F. Keith Theatre (later the Normandie and Laffmovie) and the newer Keith Memorial (later known as the Savoy and is now the Boston Opera House). After the tragic 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire (492 deaths), Boston heavily enforced new fire laws, and since the Bijou did not have adequate exits, it was forced to close.
  The Bijou was razed to the orchestra and stage floors, which became the roof of the stores below. Most of what remained of the Bijou building was demolished in 2008, but Emerson College bought the property and plans to make the Bijou and Paramount Theatre into theatres and dormitories.
caption: Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe at the Bijou, 1884
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