Garland Theater: Spokane's Independent Cinema Since Nineteen Forty-Five
Near Spokane, Washington
In the Garland District of north Spokane, a neighborhood movie house opened in nineteen forty-five and has been showing films ever since, which in the history of American cinema is a remarkable survival.
The Garland Theater was built to serve the working-class neighborhoods of North Hill, which were filling with families after the war. Single-screen neighborhood theaters were everywhere in nineteen forty-five. By nineteen eighty most of them were gone, converted to retail or torn down when the multiplex chains pulled audiences to the suburbs.
The Garland survived by staying independent and by serving a community that wanted it to. It now screens second-run films, cult classics, and art house features at prices significantly below what the chains charge, which has made it a genuine institution in the north side of the city. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in twenty thirteen, a recognition that neighborhood movie theaters are not just nostalgic artifacts but working pieces of cultural infrastructure. This one happens to still be working.
