The Film Guild Cinema was a movie house designed by notable

architectural theoretician Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

and

De Stijl De Stijl (, ; 'The Style') was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 by a group of artists and architects based in Leiden (Theo van Doesburg, Jacobus Oud, J.J.P. Oud), Voorburg (Vilmos Huszár, Jan Wils) and Laren, North Holland, Laren (Piet Mo ...

member,

Frederick Kiesler Frederick Jacob Kiesler (September 22, 1890 – December 27, 1965) was an Austrian-American architect, theoretician, theater designer, artist and sculptor. Biography Kiesler was born Friedrich Jacob Kiesler in Czernowitz, Austro-Hungarian Empir ...

(earlier designs by

Eugene De Rosa Eugene De Rosa (born Eugenio De Rosa; 1894 – ) was an Italian American architect. He worked in New York City and specialized in the design of theatres. De Rosa's business flourished from 1918 to 1929, particularly during the Roaring Twenties, ...

).Manhattan Index Cards
historictheatres.org June 2017 It was located at 52 W. 8th St. in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. It was built in 1929. It was renamed the 8th Street Playhouse a year later. The first stage performance was of ''Life & Love-Ballet of Hands'' & first film shown was ''The Frog Princess''. Kiesler, in writing about the new design for the cinema, billed it as "The first 100% cinema". By the end of World War II, the original exterior designed by Kiesler had been stripped away. The theater eventually became known for its quirky film festivals and for its nightly midnight movies, most famously,

The Rocky Horror Picture Show ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' is a 1975 independent musical comedy horror film produced by Lou Adler and Michael White, directed by Jim Sharman, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The screenplay was written by Sharman and Richard O ...

with the world-famous 8th Street Playhouse Floorshow. After owner Steve Hirsch died in 1986, the theater was taken over by BS Moss, then

United Artists United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...

, and finally by City Cinemas. It was closed in 1991. The building was used as the New York location of the

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

TLA Video TLA Releasing is a US film distribution and production company owned by TLA Entertainment Group. In March 2011, a new LLC was formed for the operation. Its primary output is LGBT-related films from all over the world under the "TLA Releasing" la ...

chain, a video rental store specializing in non-mainstream film until 2004. It currently houses the offices of urgent care physicians associated with Mount Sinai Hospital. During the 1980s,

Adam Savage Adam Whitney Savage (born July 15, 1967) is an American special effects designer and manufacturer, fabricator, actor, educator, television personality, and producer, best known as the former co-host, with Jamie Hyneman, of the Discovery Channe ...

worked as a projectionist at the cinema. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvYkkwiQ5DY&t=396s

References

Cinemas and movie theaters in Manhattan Greenwich Village Repertory cinemas in the United States Theatres completed in 1929 Former theatres in Manhattan 1939 establishments in New York City 1991 disestablishments in New York (state) {{Manhattan-struct-stub